cc ' . 



* « < 
< C C 
c ( C C 



C c < < 

: cc cc 

ccc 



V5 

c c ( 

r rcrtf 



c c 



c «r c c< <^ 

7c c Cc c 

<c ^ c c ccc< 

r < C< 

( cc 

p ( Cc 

( c c C 
" ( < 

> < < C 

r « « ' 

c « 

c < c /{ c c« c 

C C * C .a C 

c 

c C c u C « 
" ^ c C CC ^ 



« < c C<<^ 



rY <C c 
C CcC C 

t cC c c 

C < C ( - 



r c c 

: cc 



CCC, 

; c c j 

^ c ccc 

CC€T < CCC 

:<CC CT c i CCC 

Cc C "€S CCC 

CCCC" CCC 

«Tc^c c? < ccc 
£ . « (CC 

ccc 

CcC CC < cCC 

rcc cc ccc 

C CCC cc CCC 

rcfC'ccccc <> 

: c c c ( c c 

c c <: cj c c c 
c ceo c« c ■• c 

c C(C c < C c 

ccc <: c c 

^ c c c 
c c < c 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.! 

# 

| <^y,. ...3.<1^5"0J 
| <=^^ {23.5 | 

l UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. J 



4 

(CC O 

ccc CC 
CC CC 
C CO 

c c< 
CCCL C 

< c c 

cere 
ccc c 

C CC c 

CCS < 
ccc 

c q c 
C« 

c cc 
c cc 

• C CC 
< C Cc 

d <t 
c cc 

c c cr < 






cc CCC 



t€^£ 



cr c CccC 



c c eel 



CCc CCCCC ccc^ 
>r c c Cc CC cctCC 



c c ^< 

< C <f 


cr< 

c < 




C 

C 


c« 

c«r< 




<: 


CCTC 


^L < 


<r 


ocrc 



cc 

cc 

, c ^< 
( cc 

Cc 
CO 



<: 



<Zcc 



cCTcc 

cCcC 
cC <c 



< C 
c c 
c C 

c c 

cC c 



cc c 

cCC 
cC C 



cc *:*: 

< cc<c rc 

Cf <C c ,r 

« <C <2 < < 

«- <C CC <C c 

" r 'C ^ c , 

'/ <c <r «c« 
c cc <r .r c. 



--C ^CXST ^c~art — 
X 5^ <C C«r 



C<c 



V£ C «C «c 






orcxr eel 

<3gC€T c C < 

Xisccr < c < 



C ccc «: cccc c c c 

_ cccccccc c c o 

~*ms§g. c«SS 

t&K&fSFAZ&JE^ c c< -^ 

-_C C Ox C cjT c^j 

:c cor c^c c<e 
k i v v ccc^ CCjCC * cjf ^ 



fit ^- ^ v ^^ ^r?^ ^ 

c 



' ct 



5CC 



c<c c: 

tc;' 

CC 

CC 



CX ' 

« <x 

Cc 

c Cc ( 

c < q €Z 
CCC ' 

<: c - 
c C 
cc- 



CC c 
CC 

cc 
cc 

CC c 



z c 
<CCV<s cc ^cc 

CCC^C C ,iCC 
J/CC c< cc cc 

4< C c C C^ c CjC 

-X.CC « C - (CC 
CCCC 

'(XCc 
(CCC u 
^^■^"^CC c cc recede 

'V ^^ c C C ccccc cccc<c 
c < c<c: ccc cc ccc c cc ccccih 

I ^ ^^^ccccrxcrc cccc^< 
or ^CCCccXc c- c C ccc 

CCC CCCC ccccc 

,C CC CC' c cc ccc 

-CC c CCC cc cc C CC< 

CCCCC.CC C ccc CC C c C >1 

CCCcc^ r 



CCC 

CCCC 

<o7c 
CCC 

<t C 

€S c 

^c < c 



Cc cCOo 



cr£! 

^ v c CCcv 

Ci ' XCCC<t4 

C accXHi 

r -^C'crcr^ 
; ccCCca 

r c-ccc<J!^» 

C c CCC << 



c^ cCCC^ 
CCCCcCCC<? 
CC cc cc<i 

cccc^cca 
c c c occ< 
ccc ccCc< 
c c c c;<ccc< 



JILV 



BUEL'S REPLY 



TO 



WHATELY. 



THE 



APOSTOLICAL SYSTEM 



THE CHURCH 

DEFENDED ; 
IN A REPLY TO DR. WHATELY 



THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 

BY SAMUEL BUEL, A. M. 

Rector of Emmanuel Parish, Cumberland, Md. 



Ov ydg s6tiv dxai'atfT'asi.aj u 0e6j, ctak' iiprvrjs wj iv 7ia,?(u$ f<ug 
ixxK^ava^s "tu,v ayiuiv. 1 Cor. xiv. 33. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

H. HOOKER, 178 CHESNUT STREET, 

1844. 



"2>V65'0 

3*\ 



r^€ 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, by 
Herman Hooker, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court, 
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



King & Baird, Printers. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter I. Page. 
The argument of Whately from " omissions" of Scrip- 
ture considered. -- 9 

Chapter II. 
Certain objections of Dr. Whately to " Church-Prin- 
ciples" considered. ------ 37 

Chapter III. 
Scriptural Evidence of an Apostolical Episcopacy. 44 

Chapter IV. 

Historical Argument for Episcopacy, and the Perpe- 
tuity of the Apostolic Succession. - -■-■'- 67 

Chapter V. 

The Priesthood of the Church. - - - - 99 

Chapter VI. 

Decisions of the Catholic Church. - 12 3 

Chapter VII. 

Principle of the Anglican Reformation. - 134 

Chapter VIII. 
Radical tendencies of Dr. Whately's System. 147 



PREFACE. 



The work of Dr. Whately, to which a reply is at- 
tempted in the following pages, has been both seductive 
and pernicious in its influence. This has been owing, 
not surely to the intrinsic force of its arguments, or the 
truth of its conclusions, but to its confident air, its plau- 
sible sophisms, its misrepresentation of the views which 
it opposes, and especially to its agreeableness to the taste 
of the religious world, and its recognition and defence 
of the position and the circumstances of various denomi- 
nations of professing Christians. The author of these 
pages has felt that a reply to the work of Whately was 
called for, if for no other reason, at least to remove from 
the Church the stigma of a vaunting argument against 
its principles, which by its adversaries is deemed unan- 
swerable. He has therefore, though one of the hum- 
blest of the Church's sons, obeyed the promptings 
within him, and done what he could for the assertion of 
her principles. If he has succeeded in laying bare the 
sophistry of Dr. Whately's work, and exposing its con- 
fident assertions, which would pass for arguments, — its 
inconsistencies, — and its absurdities, — if he has sue- 



Vlii PREFACE. 

ceeded in freeing the catholic system of the Church 
from the clouds of misrepresentation, and setting it 
forth as it is, in its truth and lustre, his object has been 
attained. He has not noticed each and every detail of 
Dr. Whately's book. He has rather sought to over- 
throw its main positions, and to exhibit its genuine 
tendencies, — and in doing this he has consulted brevity, 
so far as the interests of truth would allow. Nothing 
important, however, in Dr. Whately's book, it is be- 
lieved, has been left unnoticed. With prayers that his 
labors may subserve the holy cause of Christ and his 
Church, the author commits his Reply to the press. It 
remains to say, that the references in these pages to 
Whately's work, are to the edition of Wiley & Putnam. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ARGUMENT OF WHATELY FROM " OMISSIONS" OF 
SCRIPTURE CONSIDERED. 

The work of Dr. Whatcly on the Kingdom of Christ 
has been hailed by sectaries of every hue as an irrefuta- 
ble answer to the claims of an apostolical episcopacy, 
and a full justification of the principle of Dissent from 
the Church, whose government and doctrine are derived 
in unbroken succession from the apostles. And cer- 
tainly the reasoning of Dr. Whately is plausible and 
ingenious, and falling in with the inclinations of those, 
who most admire it, is easily viewed by them as unan- 
swerable. But we hope to be able to show that his 
premises are unsound, and more than this, that if his 
premises were granted, his conclusions by no means 
necessarily flow from them. We hope also to show 
that his system is one, which shuts God out of his own 
kingdom, and leaves it a prey to the fickleness and way- 
wardness and radical spirit of human invention. 

With the first essay of Dr. Whately's volume we 
shall not concern ourselves, not that we assent entirely 

2 



10 THE ARGUMENT OF WHATELY FROM 

to the force of the reasoning in that essay, or adopt to 
the full extent all its conclusions, but because the poison 
of his religious system is to be found in the second essay 
of his volume. 

Dr. Whately makes in the outset an admission, which 
is most important, and which in the course of our re- 
marks we shall show to be fatal to his system, that the 
apostles were commissioned to establish the Church.* 

11 But when the personal ministry of Christ came to a 
close, the gospel they were thenceforward to preach was 
the good tidings of that kingdom not approaching merely, 
but actually begun, — of the first Christian community 
set on foot, — of a kingdom, which their Master had 
" appointed unto them :" thenceforward, they were not 
merely to announce that kingdom, but to establish it, 
and invite all men to enrol themselves in it : they were 
not merely to make known, but to execute, their Mas- 
ter's design, of commencing that society of which he is 
the Head, and which He has promised to be with "al- 
ways, even unto the end of the world." 

" We find Him, accordingly, directing them not only 
to go into all the world, and preach to every creature," 
but further, to " teach" (" make disciples of," as in the 
margin of the Bible,) "all nations," admitting them as 
members of the body of disciples, by " baptizing them 
into the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost." Of this admission, with which Dr. Whately 
starts, we shall make due and full use in the progress of 
our reply. 

He then proceeds to lay down the essentials of a com- 
munity .t " It seems to belong to the very essence of a 
* Page 55. f Page 57. 



"omissions" of scripture considered. 11 

community, that it should have — 1st. Officers of some 
kind ; 2dly. Rules, enforced by some kind of penalties ; 
and 3d!y. Some powers of admitting and excluding per- 
sons as members." And he says that it can scarcely 
admit of doubt — " that our Lord did sanction and enjoin 
the formation of a permanent religious community or 
communities, possessing all those powers which have 
been above alluded to."* 

These statements are sufficiently clear, and what is 
more, they are true and just. Nor do we find any 
thing, which specially requires animadversion, till we 
reach that portion of Dr. Whately's essay, in which he 
armies from the omissions of the New Testament. 
This portion is thus introduced : " And among the 
important facts which we can collect and fully ascertain 
from the sacred historians, scanty and irregular and 
imperfect as are their records of particulars, one of the 
most important is, that very scantiness and incomplete- 
ness in the detail ; that absence of any full and system- 
atic description of the formation and regulation of Chris- 
tian communities, that has been just noticed. For we 
may plainly infer from this very circumstance, the 
design of the Holy Spirit, that those details, concerning 
which no precise directions, accompanied with strict 
injunctions, are to be found in Scripture, were meant to 
be left to the regulation of each church in each age and 
country. On any point in which it was designed that 
all Christians should be, everywhere, and at all times, 
bound as strictly as the Jews were to the Levitical law, 
we may fairly conclude they would have received direc- 
tions no less precise, and descriptions no less minute, 

* Page 62. 



12 THE ARGUMENT OF WHATELY FROM 

than had been afforded to the Jew.-." He next pro- 
ceeds to say that omissions in mere human writings may 
occur from inadvertency, but that those in writings 
divinely inspired must be referred to supernatural inter- 
ference. He says, " it does seem to me perfectly incre- 
dible on any supposition but that of supernatural inter- 
ference, that neither the Apostles nor any of their many 
followers should have committed to writing any of the 
multitude of particulars which we do not find in Scrip- 
ture, and concerning which we are perfectly certain the 
Apostles did give instructions relative to Church Govern- 
ment, the Christian Ministry, and Public Worship."! 
****** " We are left then, and indeed 
unavoidably led to the conclusion, that in respect of these 
points the Apostles and their followers were, during the 
age of inspiration, supernaturally withheld from record- 
ing those circumstantial details which were not intended 
by divine Providence to be absolutely binding on all 
Churches, in every age and country, but were meant 
to be left to the discretion of each particular church."! 

This whole train of reasoning is rash and irreverent. 
It is most opposite to the deep and calm views of Bishop 
Butler, who reprobated in the strongest terms the trial 
of a revealed system of truth by the preconceptions of 
man. "Now since it has been shown," says Bishop 
Butler, "that we have no principles of reason upon 
which to judge beforehand, how it were to be expected 
revelation should have been left, or what was most suita- 
ble to the divine plan of government, in any of the fore- 
mentioned respects ; it must be quite frivolous to object 
afterwards as to any of them, against its being left in one 
* Page 74. f Page 80. * Page 83. 



"omissions" of scripture considered. 13 

way rather than another ; for this would be to object 
against things upon account of their being different from 
expectations, which have been shown to be without 
reason."* Now Dr. Whately's objections are precisely 
of this description. He objects to regard any particular 
external institutions of church government, as univer- 
sally binding portions of the Christian scheme, because 
they are not revealed in that way, in which, in the view 
of his reason, they would have been revealed, had they 
been designed to be obligatory on the church of every 
age. Such reasoning is repulsive to the humble Chris- 
tian. He is anxious to know the will of God, and ready 
to obey it however ascertained, — and least of all, does 
he think himself exempt from obligation, because the 
will of God has not been made known in that way, 
which might seem, to human wisdom, best and most 
desirable. Wherever he can discover traces of divine 
appointment, he is ready to yield submission. He does 
not endeavor to satisfy himself with the least amount of 
requisition, which he may deem to be made upon him, 
but he seeks God's entire will, and his own correspond- 
ing duty, by such means and with such evidence as God 
has vouchsafed to afford, 

Dr. Whately's reasoning is not only unhumble in its 
spirit, it also proceeds upon an erroneous view of the 
place and use of the Scriptures in the Christian system. 
The Scriptures were not a directory for the establishment 
of a church not yet in existence, but were addressed to 
churches actually established. Large portions of them 
arose from the particular circumstances of the several 
churches, to which they were addressed, and were 

* Analogy. Part II. Chap. 3d, 

2* 



14 Till: ARCIMIiN 1 01 V. i.M 

intended to convey words of admonition, or to reform 
particular practical abuses, or to correct errors in doc- 
trine, which were insinuating themselves. The Scrip- 
tures were not written to originate the faith of the 
Church, or to furnish it with a platform of government. 
The Church, when the Scriptures were written, pos- 
sessed both the faith and the external institutions which 
the Apostles had delivered to it, — and it was to sus- 
tain their doctrine and their discipline, that the Scrip- 
tures were left by the inspired Apostles as their legacy 
to the Church. We may expect therefore to find both 
doctrine and external institution in the Scriptures rather 
in the form of allusion, than in that of direct assertion, 
or positive direction. And if an omission of " details" 
and "precise directions," "accompanied with strict 
injunctions," leaves us at liberty to change or abandon 
the apostolic institutions, why does it not leave us at 
equal liberty to desert the Apostles' doctrine ? Their 
" doctrine and fellowship," in Scripture, go together, 
and if Dr. Whately's principle of " omissions" sanc- 
tions the neglect of the "fellowship," why does it not 
equally justify an abandonment of the doctrine ? 

And it is worthy of remark, that Dr. Whately himself 
asserts, most explicitly, that " the fundamental doctrines 
and the great moral principles of the gospel," are taught 
in the New Testament incidentally and by allusion : 
that is, in a way, which, according to him, is not sufli- 
cient to establish the perpetual obligation of the apostolic 
form of church government, and of adherence to the 
ministry transmitted from the founders of the Church. 
He says, "The fundamental doctrines and the great 
moral principles of the gospel are there taught, — for 



"OMISSIONS" OF SCRir-TURE CONSIDERED. 15 

wise reasons no doubt, and which I think we may in 
part perceive, not in creeds or other regular formularies, 
but incidentally, irregularly, and often by oblique allu- 
sions ; less striking indeed at first sight than distinct 
enunciations and enactments, but often even the more 
decisive and satisfactory from that very circumstance ; 
because the Apostles frequently allude to some truth as 
not only essential, but indisputably admitted, and famil- 
iarly known to be essential by those they were addres- 
sing."* These allusions, which would be well under- 
stood by those to whom they were addressed, are a 
sufficient basis, in Dr. Whately's view, for the essential 
doctrines of Christianity, but nothing less than "pre- 
cise directions, accompanied with strict injunctions," 
can enforce upon our acceptance the institutions of the 
Apostles, although to these, there are in Scripture those 
allusions, which, in the case of doctrine, Dr. W. declares 
to be " often more decisive and satisfactory," than " dis- 
tinct enunciations and enactments." What reasoning is 
this, to take back with one hand what it gives with the 
other; to use a principle in its own favor when it suits 
its purpose, and to deny it, when it makes against its 
own design ! Let us beware of applying to the Scrip- 
tures a train of reasoning to escape the power of their 
testimony to external institutions, which may undermine 
the strength of their witness to the fundamental doctrines 
of Christianity. 

Unquestionably, it is the teaching of our own branch 
of the Church, that the Scriptures contain all the articles 
of belief necessary to salvation. The Church does not 
tenHi that a formal creed is contained in Scripture 

Pa.se 109. 



1G THE ARGUMENT OF WHATELY FROM 

although she does teach that the Creed may be proved 
by Scripture, and some of the incidental proofs of doc- 
trine, which the Scriptures contain, are justly regarded 
by Dr. Whately as the most decisive and satisfactory. 
Neither does the Church teach that the Scriptures con- 
tain a formal model of church government, any more 
than they contain a formal creed, but she does maintain 
that her own form of church government is evident unto 
all men, readitig Holy Scripture and ancient authors ; 
that is, that it may be proved and established by the 
Scriptures, and as in the case of doctrine, so in this, the 
incidental teaching of Scripture, by Dr. Whately's own 
admission, is proof of the " most decisive and satisfac- 
tory" character. 

Let us bear in mind that the Scriptures were written 
not to deliver a creed or a model of church government, 
but that they were addressed to a Church, whose faith 
and government were already established by apostolic 
hands, and we shall then better estimate the strength and 
the value of their incidental notice of the doctrines and 
the institutions of the Christian religion. We shall 
especially see the reason of the omission of " precise 
directions accompanied with strict injunctions," of which 
Dr. Whately speaks, and shall beware of drawing from 
it his rash and unwarranted conclusion, — a conclusion, 
which, as we have seen, saps the very foundation of 
Christian doctrine in the holy volume. 

The Church is the home of the Scriptures. Her 
institutions shed light upon the meaning of Scripture, — 
and Scripture explained by them upholds them, and 
shows their authority to be divine. Thus, for example, 
we find intimations in Scripture that the day of our 



"omissions" of scripture considered. 17 

Lord's resurrection was observed by Christians as a day 
of religious rest and worship, but no positive enact- 
ments on the subject. What light is thrown upon this 
institution by the undoubted practice of Christians, as 
ascertained from the earliest records of the Church ! 
Ignatius, in his epistle to the Magnesians, exhorts them 
not to sabbatize with the Jews, but to lead a life agree- 
able to the Lord's day. And in like manner, Clemens 
Alexandrinus, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian, speak of 
the Lord's day. The universal practice of Christians, 
from the first, upon this subject, imparts clearness to the 
intimations of Scripture, elevates them to the rank of 
commands, and gives them a meaning and a force which 
otherwise they would not possess. The intimations of 
Scripture on the subject of Infant Baptism are still more 
obscure, — but are rendered plain and satisfactory by the 
ascertained practice of the early Church. And so, one 
who was not acquainted with the Christian scheme, 
might doubt, upon reading the Scriptures, whether the 
Eucharist were designed to be a perpetual observance 
of Christianity ; but let him become acquainted with the 
undoubted practice of the Church, from the earliest ages 
downwards, — its correspondence with the expressions 
of Scripture would be clear, and these expressions 
themselves would receive a light from the practice of 
the Church, which, taken by themselves, they would 
not possess. And, in like manner, let one unacquainted 
with Christianity read Scripture with the whole system 
of the Church, its ministry, its worship, its sacraments, 
its teaching, fully in view, — and portions of Scripture 
which would otherwise be dark and doubtful, would 
become clear and intelligible, and would support and 



18 THE ARGUMENT OF WIIATELV TROM 

illustrate the very institutions from which they them- 
selves would borrow meaning and force. There is one 
short passage of one of St. Paul's epistles, which con- 
tains the very strongest doctrine of the sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper. " The cup of blessing which we bless, 
is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The 
bread which we break, is it not the communion of the 
body of Christ?"* This pregnant text fully sustains 
the doctrine of the Church on the subject of the Eucha- 
rist, as it is embodied in our own communion service, 
in common with all the ancient liturgies. And yet 
without this teaching of the Church there might be 
much question as to the meaning of the Apostle's ex- 
pression. The Apostle mentions the doctrine as one 
that was known and recognized, and therefore needed 
not particular explanation. These incidental allusions 
of Scripture are therefore the evident scriptural support 
of institutions which are acknowledged to be permanent, 
such as the sacraments of the Church ; and they are 
just the kind of notice which we should expect to be 
taken in Scripture of the institutions of the Church. 
These allusions are at once the evidence of the apos- 
tolic establishment of the permanent institutions of the 
Church, and the warrant for their continuance and their 
obligation. 

Indeed there is as little scriptural evidence for the 
permanence of the sacraments of religion, as for the 
perpetual obligation of the apostolic ministry. To take 
for illustration the sacrament of the Lord's supper. We 
have in Scripture the history and the words of institution 
of the Eucharist, and so we have the equally explicit 
* 1 Cor. x. 16. 



11 OiHISSIONs" OF SCRIPTURE CONSIDERED. 19 

commission of the Apostles. St. Paul says that in the 
Lord's supper we show forth the Lord's death till he 
come, thereby intimating the perpetuity of the ordinance. 
And in like manner, our Saviour promised to be with his 
Apostles unto the end of the world, and St. Paul, in 
delivering to Timothy a charge faithfully to execute his 
episcopal office, enjoins him to keep this commandment, 
without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our 
Lord Jesus Christ. The inward blessing of the Lord's 
supper, as mentioned in Scripture, the communion of 
the body and blood of Christ, also indicates that an ordi- 
nance of such spiritual significance was designed to be 
permanent; and in like manner, the purposes of an 
apostolic ministry appointed by God, as enumerated in 
Scripture, " the perfecting of the saints, the work of 
the ministry, the edifying of the body of Christ," show 
the design of God to transmit and continue it in the 
Church from age to age. There is as much reason from 
Scripture to suppose the sacraments to be changeable 
ordinances, as to suppose the ministry alterable by the 
wisdom of man to suit the varying circumstances of 
each particular age and country. The apostolic ministry, 
and the sacraments which they are authorized to admin- 
ister, rest upon evidence of the very same kind. Dr. 
Whately's reasoning, if admitted, undermines the scrip- 
tural evidence by which the sacraments, the ministry, 
and the doctrines of religion are alike supported. His 
selection of some things enjoined, and of others left at 
large, when by his own admission those enjoined often 
rest upon evidence destitute of that very directness for 
the want of which he deems the others to be left at large, 
is a selection entirely arbitrary. 



tQ THE ARGUMENT OF WHATELY IUO.M 

The argument of Dr. Whately from the "omissions" 
of Scripture is one, which we wish to set and refute in 
various lights. Any explanation which can be given of 
these assumed " omissions," different from his, weakens 
the force of his reasoning, and deprives it of its specious 
pretence to demonstration. Averse as we are to a priori 
reasoning upon the ways of God, it is allowable to 
oppose speculation by speculation. Dr. Whately thinks 
that if God had designed to render obligatory in the 
Church any particular external organization, he would 
have embodied in Scripture precise directions concerning 
the polity which was to be perpetuated. Now to us 
this expectation by no means seerns the only or the most 
reasonable one. We might as reasonably anticipate that 
external institutions would bear witness to themselves 
by being seen and transmitted. They are outward and 
palpable, and by their visibility are to make themselves 
known. An humble minded Christian need only know 
that a particular institution was established as a consti- 
tuent part of the Church by the Apostles, to make him 
feel his obligation to adhere to it, at all events to make 
him feel that adherence to such institutions of the Apos- 
tles is the course of safety, and therefore the course of 
duty. Now Dr. Whately acknowledges that the 
governing power of a society is a necessary part of its 
constitution. He admits also that the Church, which 
the Apostles founded, was designed to be a permanent 
society. The government therefore, which the divinely 
designated founders of such a society established as a 
constituent part of it, no Christian who reverences the 
appointments of God will venture to depart from, lest 
he should thus be erecting the will and the wisdom of 
man against the fiat of a higher Power. 



*' 03IISSI0NS" OF SCRIPTURE CONSIDERED. 21 

This argument acquires strength on the supposition 
(which is indeed the case) that the institutions of the 
Apostles contain in themselves provisions for their own 
perpetuation, and if they be accompanied, as in fact 
they are, with the promise of the Saviour that he will be 
with his Apostles till the end of the world. In that case, 
independently of any detail in Scripture, the institu- 
tions themselves bear witness to the intentions of their 
founders that they should be perpetuated, and we are 
contravening an expressly declared design of God, if 
we do not adhere to them, and then too, to them only 
can we, in reason, apply the promise of the Saviour 
made to the Apostles in the very terms of their commis- 
sion to found the Church, that he would be with them 
to the end of the world. An external institution, con- 
taining a provision for its own perpetuation, as does the 
episcopal succession of the ministry, is both fitted and 
designed to bear witness to itself, and in this intention, 
and not in the supposed opposite design that the consti- 
tution of the Church as established by the Apostles was 
not to be rendered obligatory in all ages, are we to find 
the most reasonable account of the omission of detail in 
Scripture, even granting that omission to exist in the 
fullest extent to which Dr. Whately assumes it. 

Nor would we, by this line of argument, be deprived 
of scriptural warrant for the binding force of the apos- 
tolic constitution. The absence of detail in Scripture is 
not the same thing with the absence of scriptural support 
for those institutions, of which the Scriptures do not 
give us the details. The absence of detail, granting it 
to exist, has already been accounted for by the fact that 
the institutions themselves bear witness, and, as appears 

3 



22 THE ARGUMENT OF WHATELY FROM 

from their very nature, were intended to bear witness to 
their own details, and thus is the argument of Dr. 
Whately from the absence of detail effectually over- 
thrown. But there may nevertheless be foundation in 
the Scriptures for the binding power of those institutions, 
whose details, we are now supposing, the Scriptures do 
not give. 

And such is actually the case, and may be shown to 
be so by Dr. Whately's own admissions. He acknow- 
ledges in explicit terms that the Apostles were commis- 
sioned not only to announce but to establish the kingdom 
of their Master. This admission we have already quoted 
in full and need not now repeat. But if they were com- 
missioned to establish a divine society with which it 
should be the duty of men to connect themselves, that 
society, as they established and transmitted it, we are 
most assuredly bound to receive. Their commission as 
founders of the Church is our undoubted obligation to 
adhere to the institutions, which they have handed down 
as constituent parts of the Church, however these insti- 
tutions are ascertained, and not the warrant, as Dr. 
Whately would make it, for such institutions as man 
may erect in the Church in each particular age and 
country. Our only excuse for not walking in the foot- 
steps of the Apostles by adhering to their institutions, 
can be that we cannot discover what their institutions 
are. But if they can in any way be discovered, then 
our obligation to abide by them is contained in all its 
stringent force in the apostolic commission, the existence 
and true meaning of which Dr. Whately himself does 
not pretend to deny. 

How much higher is our obligation, when we con- 



"omissions" of scripture considered. 23 

sider that we have not far to seek for the apostolic insti- 
tutions, where they are brought to our very homes by a 
lineal succession from the day of their first origination ; 
a succession which can be established by the fullest evi- 
dence — evidence as old and as universal as Christendom ; 
a succession which, by the power of demonstration, 
can be shown never to have been broken. 

Were we left, then, merely to the light of history 
and universal tradition to ascertain the appointments of 
the Apostles in the Church, which have been transmit- 
ted from them to our day, these appointments, thus 
ascertained, would be bound upon our acceptance, by 
the authority of Scripture, even though there were in 
Scripture the absence of the slightest detail concerning 
them. The Apostolic commission is not the only 
scripturally recorded source of our obligation to adhere 
to the institutions which the Apostles have established 
as constituent parts of the Christian Church. The 
principle is laid down broadly in Scripture, that autho- 
rity to act in divine things cometh only from God. 
" No man taketh this honour to, himself, but he that is 
called of God, as was Aaron."* This principle was 
acted upon under the old dispensation, both in the com- 
mission of their priesthood and the sending of their pro- 
phets. It was acted upon by St. John the Baptist, the 
only commissioned ambassador of that dispensation, 
which introduced the dispensation of the Gospel. It 
was acted upon by our blessed Lord himself. He con- 
stantly appealed to his being sent by the Father as the 
ground for the acknowledgment of his claims. " Christ 
glorified not himself to be made an High Priest."t And 
* Heb. v. 4. f Heb. v. 5. 



24 THE ARGUMENT OF WIIATHLY FROM 

shall man dare to do that which our Lord himself did 
not venture upon, act as the ambassador of God, with- 
out a clear commission from above? Most expressive 
are those questions of the sweet Christian poet — 

" Who, then, uncalled by Thee, 

Dare touch thy Spouse, thy very self below 1 

Or, who dare count him summoned worthily, 
Except thine hand and seal he show 1" 

Was a clear commission from above requisite to the 
administration of the dim shadows of the law, and is it 
not required for the administration of the divine sub- 
stance and reality of the gospel ? Our Saviour expressly 
told his Apostles that as he received authority from his 
Father, so did he impart authority to them: "As my 
Father hath sent me, even so send I you," and without 
such authority, their administration of divine things 
would have been a most presumptuous arrogation of an 
office which even angels, without express authority, 
might not dare to take. 

But if this authority be necessary, it must either be 
conferred by immediate inspiration, or there must be 
some clear line in which it can be traced and seen to 
come from God. The Apostles were authorized by 
Christ to found the Church, and from them, therefore, 
or rather from Christ through them, must all authority in 
the Church emanate. Now if, as can and will be shown, 
they have established a regular line of succession for 
the transmission of this authority, even though there 
were not a single word in Scripture descriptive of this 
line, yet the scriptural principle that authority in things 
divine must come from God, and the scriptural fact that 



" omissions" of scripture considered. 25 

this authority comes through the Apostles, would be our 
ample warrant, nay, more, our bounden obligation, to 
adhere to the ministerial authority which they have 
transmitted, in the line of succession through which 
they have transmitted it. To continue the quotation 
from our true Catholic poet — 

" Where can thy seal be found 

But on the chosen seed, from age to age, 

By thine anointed heralds duly crowned, 
As kings and priests thy war to wage?" 

But it may be said that our train of reasoning 
throws us among the uncertainties of tradition, and that 
God would most assuredly never expose appointments, 
which he designed to be permanent, to such hazards. 
We answer, that the same universal tradition which 
bears witness to the authenticity and inspiration of Scrip- 
ture,* bears witness also to the permanent appointments 

* Those who decry the universal tradition of the Church, little 
think how our very Christianity depends upon it. From the tra- 
dition of the Church we derive, as is remarked in the text, our 
belief in the authenticity and the inspiration of Scripture. Now, 
the collection of the books of Scripture into the sacred canon was 
a work of immense importance. It required careful scrutiny and 
discrimination so to discharge this work, that the genuine compo- 
sitions of the inspired writers might be ascertained and received. 
The Church in every part of the world certainly did not personally 
inspect the original manuscripts of Scripture, and must therefore 
have received the genuine writings of inspiration on competent tes- 
timony. How nice this question was, may be estimated from the 
fact that writings revered and read in the churches, such as the 
epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, were nevertheless rejected 
from the inspired canon. Now, if we cannot trust the universal 
testimony of Christendom concerning the known open faith of the 

3* 



26 TIIK ARGUMENT OF WI1ATELY FROM 

of the Apostles in the Church; and ifits witness to one 
of these points be rejected, its witness to the others is 
thereby undermined. Universal tradition is our security 
against the uncertain traditions of man's invention. 
Universal tradition is the voice of God in his Church ; 
it is the voice by which the inspired Apostles of Christ, 
being dead, yet live and speak. 

But still it may be urged, this testimony of tradition 
is peculiarly liable to perversion. Be it so : the liability 
of tradition to perversion, is no proof that it has been 
perverted on. any particular point. This is a matter of 
fact, and must be determined by the evidence in each 
particular case ; and concerning the ministerial authority 
which the Apostles have handed down in the Church, 
universal tradition is our warrant, that however it may 
have been abused, it still exists, and demands our rever- 

Church of every age, how can we trust the correctness of their 
investigation of a question so nice and important as the authen- 
ticity of the inspired writings 1 A question, too, which must have 
been originally investigated by the light of human testimony. 

But, again : the inspiration of Scripture is a distinct question 
from its authenticity. Although the inspired Apostles may have 
transmitted writings to us, the question is a distinct one, whether 
they were inspired to indite and transmit these compositions. Nor 
were all the books of the New Testament written by inspired 
Apostles. This question of the inspiration of the Scriptures of 
the New Testament is settled for us solely by the testimony of the 
Church. And so, that great principle that the Scriptures contain 
all things necessary to salvation, is certainly nowhere asserted in 
Scripture itself. Its great support is the testimony of the Church. 
We see, therefore, how much we jeopardize by rejecting the testi- 
mony of the Church to its own faith and practice. By doing so, 
we undermine that very testimony which is the foundation of our 
Christianity. 



" omissions" of scripture considered. 27 

ence, and claims our obedience. But in fact, neither 
Scripture nor universal tradition are an actual, though 
they are a sufficient security against error and heresy. 
Man may abuse any system which God delivers to him. 
He may fall into errors in spile of the ample means of 
ascertaining the truth, which God has placed within his 
reach. This liability to error is a part of our trial. It 
exercises our faith and our love of truth, and if it re- 
sults in our walking in the way of truth, it will enhance 
our reward. But it is a most presumptuous exercise of 
our understanding to determine that we will receive no 
system, even from God, which does not square with 
our preconceived notions ; that a violation of these no- 
tions shall be a sufficient reason for our rejection of a 
scheme, or a portion of a scheme, which professes to 
come from God ; that we will not acknowledge an au- 
thority to be derived from Him, unless it shall be trans- 
mitted in the way we deem the best, or antecedently 
probable. And yet such a course of reasoning has been 
directed by Dr. Whately against the perpetual obligation 
of institutions, which, from the earliest ages, have been 
held sacred and inviolable in the Christian Church. 

But let us set our argument in another light. We 
have seen the principle recognized in Scripture, that 
authority from God in things divine cannot be exercised, 
unless it be clearly traceable from Him. If, then, Dr. 
Whately's argument from the omission of details in 
Scripture proves that no unbroken line of authority, to 
which we are bound to submit, is traceable in any par- 
ticular succession from the Apostles, then are we left 
without any authority clearly derived from them to ex- 
ercise the ministry of reconciliation — that is, since we 



28 THE ARGUMENT OF WIlATELY FROM 

have already seen that ministerial authority in the Church 
of Christ must come from them, the founders of the 
Church, ice are left without any ministerial authority 
in the Church of Christ. 

How does Dr. Whately evade this direct result of his 
own denial of a perpetual line of authority in the Church 
emanating from the Apostles ? Why, by making the 
" omissions" of Scripture the ground of a divine sanc- 
tion to ministerial authority of human origin in the 
Church. He argues thus : " The rock on which I am 
persuaded our Reformers intended, and rightly intended 
to rest the ordinances of our Church, is, the warrant to 
be found in the holy Scriptures written by, or under the 
direction of, those to whom our Lord had entrusted the 
duty ' of teaching men to observe all things whatsoever 
he had commanded them.' For in those Scriptures we 
find a divine sanction clearly given to a regular Chris- 
tian community — a church ; which is, according to the 
definition in our 19th Article, 'a congregation,' (i. e. 
society, or community ; Ecclesia) ' of faithful men, in 
the which the pure word of God is preached, and the 
sacraments dulv administered according to Christ's or- 
dinance, in all those things which of necessity are 
requisite to the same.' Now since, from the very nature 
of the case, every society must have officers appointed 
in some way or other, and every society that is to be 
permanent a perpetual succession of officers, in what- 
ever manner kept up, and must have also a power of 
enacting, abrogating, and enforcing on its own members 
such regulations or bye-laws as are not opposed to some 
higher authority, it follows inevitably (as I have above 
observed) that any one who sanctions a society, gives, 



"omissions" of scripture considered. 29 

in so doing, his sanction to those essentials of a society, 
its government — its officers — its regulations. Accord- 
ingly, even if our Lord had not expressly said any 
thing about 'binding and loosing,' still the very circum- 
stance of his sanctioning a Christian community would 
necessarily have implied his sanction of the institutions, 
ministers and government of a Christian Church, so 
long as nothing is introduced at variance with the posi- 
tive enactments and the fundamental principles laid 
down by himself and his Apostles."* 

This paragraph requires careful dissection, for it con- 
tains the gist of Dr. Whately's argument. "In those 
Scriptures," he says, " we find a divine sanction clearly 
given to a regular Christian community — a Church." 
If this were all that we found there, Dr. Whately's ar- 
gument would be a very fair one ; but he carefully sup- 
presses in this place what we find more in Scripture, 
and that is, not only " a divine sanction clearly given to 
a regular Christian community," but also a divine com- 
mission to an apostolic ministry, with a promise of 
presence and support to that ministry till the end of the 
world. We find a direct conveyance of power to cer- 
tain individuals to act as ambassadors for Christ, and a 
prohibition to any to act thus who are not called and 
sent as specifically as were the Jewish priesthood. We 
need therefore not merely such a sanction of our Lord 
to " the institutions, ministers, and government of a 
Christian Church," as is inferred from the fact that "in- 
stitutions, ministers, and government" are essentials of 
"a Christian community," combined with the further 
fact that our Lord has sanctioned such a community, 

* Pages 116, 117, 118. 



30 THE ARGUMENT OF WHATELY FROM 

but we need, in addition, the assurance that the " insti- 
tutions, ministers, and government" are the identical 
ones which he has established and transmitted, and 
stamped with the authority that comes from him. So 
long as the apostolic commission remains on record with 
the gracious promise included in its very terms, of the 
perpetual presence and support of the Saviour, so long 
as the words remain written, " As my Father hath sent 
me, even so I send you," " No man taketh this honour 
unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron," 
so long will a clearly traced mission from the Saviour, 
and not a mere deduction from the " essentials of a so- 
ciety" be necessary to the establishment of ministerial 
authority in the Church of Christ. If a direct commis- 
sion was necessary for the exercise of the Christian min- 
istry in the days of Christ and his Apostles, it is equally 
necessary now, and if we have it not, if the pretended 
" omissions" of Scripture show that we have it not, 
then do they also show that ministerial authority from 
Christ has ceased. But from "omissions" Dr. Whately 
argues a direct grant of authority to establish a min- 
istry from Christ. He first uses these " omissions" to 
overthrow the succession of ministerial authority from 
Christ, and then makes use of them to secure a divine 
sanction to a ministry, which man may have appointed, 
with the simple proviso that nothing be "introduced at 
variance with the positive enactments, and the funda- 
mental principles laid down by himself and his Apos- 
tles." Where ever before were omissions in an instru- 
ment of authority stretched into a large and direct grant 
of authority, and that too by the overthrow of an authority 
whose clear warrant is contained in the very instrument, 



" omissions" of scripture considered. 31 

which is thus strangely used ? We know not, but we 
hardly believe that authority thus founded would be 
deemed legitimate in courts of human law. 

But on what does Dr. Whately rest this new-fangled 
authority, which he has evoked from the omissions of 
Scripture. On Scripture itself? This we might expect 
from one who is unwilling to admit any obligation but 
that which is based upon "precise directions, accompa- 
nied with strict injunctions" in the sacred volume. But 
our expectations will be disappointed. "Now since, 
from the very nature of the case" — is the commence- 
ment of the piece of reasoning which we have quoted 
above, and which we are now considering. Dr. Whate- 
ly's own inference from the fact of our Saviour's having 
sanctioned a Christian community, (he leaves out of 
view, be it remembered, the equally important fact of 
our Saviour's having transmitted in that Church a per- 
manent ministerial commission,) his simple inference, 
" from the very nature of the case," sets aside the per- 
petual apostolic commission, which was a commission 
to a ministry never to cease, and establishes in its place, 
as from Christ, a ministry multiform as the invention 
and the wisdom of man. And this is his foundation on 
a rock, as opposed to the sandy foundation of those who 
maintain the perpetuity of the Apostolic commission, 
and of the ministry, which holds under it ! We are irre- 
sistibly reminded of the words of Burns — 

" O would some power the giftie gie us, 
To see ourselves as ithers see us, 
It wad frae monie a blunder free us, 
And foolish notion." 

Certainly Dr. Whately's perception of foundation 



32 THE ARGUMENT OF WIIATELY FROM 

must be very peculiar. But indeed his strange, and we 
doubt not honest idea, is a striking exemplification of 
the blinding power of sophistry. It leads those whom it 
possesses, to mistake ingenuity for truth, their own bril- 
liant but airy creations for the realities of the universe, 
just as the wretched victim of insanity can conjure 
around him all the splendors and powers of a kingdom 
which he counts his own, nothing daunted by those 
stern realities, his mean and narrow cell, and the chain 
which fetters him : a chain, which he may imagine the 
trappings of his royalty, a cell, which he may deem his 
gorgeous palace. 

Dr. Whately bases "the Institutions, Ministry, and 
Government, of a Christian Church," on " the very 
nature of the case," but he argues from the nature of 
one case to that of another. He applies his argument 
to a divine society, but he derives it from the principles 
of civil society. If it can be shown that God has 
appointed founders of civil society, holding a commis- 
sion from himself to establish it, and that no authority 
in it is legitimate but such as can be traced to Him as 
directly as the call of the Jewish Priesthood, then de- 
partures from such a government would be entirely 
unjustifiable, and the power of men to change and form 
governments for themselves would be a nullity. From 
the fact that God has made no authority distinctly trace- 
able to his immediate appointment necessary in civil 
government, we may infer that the form of government 
is left very much to the discretion of man, and the 
changes of circumstances and events. 

And this is a great difference of civil society from the 
divine society, the Church which God has established 



" omissions" of scripture considered. 33 

iii the world. In that, a direct call from Him is neces- 
sary to the exercise of authority, as we have already 
shown. We cannot therefore reason, as Dr. Whately 
has done, from the nature of civil society to that of the 
Church. 

The Church is the instrument which God has ap- 
pointed for bringing us into covenant with Himself, and 
it is as presumptuous and illegal for any to undertake to 
administer and ratify this covenant and affix its seals 
who have not been sent by a commission which can be 
traced to God, as in civil government it would be for any 
to claim authority to establish and ratify a treaty, on the 
grounds that the formation of a treaty had been decided 
upon by the contracting powers, and that some agents 
must carry their designs into effect, although the indi- 
viduals claiming authority on these grounds could pro- 
duce no commission from their respective governments 
to substantiate their claim. 

The idea of a ministry commissioned in regular suc- 
cession from the Apostles is sometimes attempted to be 
laughed down in the world, as an idea opposed to the 
common sense of mankind. It is indeed strange that 
men will not admit on this subject the common-sense 
which they apply to secular affairs. Governors, Judges, 
Legislators, all officers of earthly governments must 
receive their commission to act from the lawful source 
of authority. What would be thought of an individual, 
or a combination of individuals, who should pretend to 
exercise judicial or legislative powers on the ground that 
they were entirely qualified to do so, and therefore had 
as good a right to exercise these powers as those who 
were formally and legally commissioned. Their usur- 

4 



34 THE ARGUMENT OF WIIATELY FROM 

pation would be derided as ridiculous, or punished as 
dangerous. But the same idea of a regularly derived 
and transmitted commission from the source of authority 
in things divine, is denounced by the self-wise world as 
the height of bigotry and exclusiveness. 

And this is also an idea which is by no means pleas- 
ing to Dr. Whately, and to support him in his dislike of 
it he endeavors to link with himself the Reformers of 
the Anglican Church. He says of them, " they rest 
the claims of Ministers, not on some supposed sacra- 
mental virtue transmitted from hand to hand in unbroken 
succession from the Apostles in a chain, of which if any 
one link be even doubtful, a distressing uncertainty is 
thrown over all Christian Ordinances, Sacraments, and 
Church-privileges for ever ; but on the fact of those 
Ministers being the regularly -appointed officers of a 
regular Christian community"* He quotes in sup- 
port of this assertion the 23d Article. This Article is 
very indefinite, and to ascertain what those who com- 
posed it meant by it, we must refer to other parts of the 
Book of Common Prayer. When therefore in the pre- 
face to the Ordinal, we find ihem asserting on the ground 
of Scripture and Ancient Precedent that there have 
always been three "Orders of Ministers in Christ's 
Church," that these offices were always had in "reve- 
rend estimation," and " that no man might presume to 
execute any of them, except he were first called, tried, 
examined, and known to have such qualities as are 
requisite for the same ; and also by public prayer, with 
imposition of hands, were approved and admitted there- 
unto by lawful authority :" and on these grounds thus 

* Page 118. 



" omissions" of scripture considered. 35 

detailed, providing for the continuance and reverent use 
and esteem of "these orders" "in this Church," and 
enacting that none shall be " taken to be a lawful Bishop, 
Priest or Deacon, in this Church," " or suffered to exe- 
cute any of the said functions," " except he be called, 
tried, examined and admitted thereunto, according to 
the form hereafter following, or hath had Episcopal 
Consecration or Ordination," we have an explanation 
and limitation of the general language of the Article by 
its very framers. Terms of the same import, "public 
authority," "lawful authority," are used in the Article 
and the preface, and of the meaning of them in the pre- 
face there can be no doubt. 

The preface provides that these orders be, not esta- 
blished de novo, but " continued" ; and so important 
does it deem this continuance or succession to the trans- 
mission of ministerial authority, that " episcopal conse- 
cration or ordination," is absolutely necessary to the 
exercise of ministerial functions in this Church. If a 
" regularly-appointed officer of a regulur Christian 
community " which does not hold the episcopal succes- 
sion is admitted to the ministry of "this Church," he 
must receive orders de novo as one who has never had 
them. This is not required in one who has had epis- 
copal ordination. His orders are recognized. Can any 
thing be more decisive of the fact, that in the view of our 
reformers the lawful call of which the 23d Article speaks, 
was authority " transmitted from hand to hand in un- 
broken succession from the Apostles ?" On no other 
supposition can their regulations, as defined in the pre- 
face of the Ordinal, be cleared of the highest presump- 
tion and impropriety. On no other supposition can they 



30 THE ARGUMENT OF WHATELY, ETC. 

be acquitted of a disparagement of Christ's true ministry, 
and of making the solemn scene of Christian ordination, 
a solemn, empty mockery. 

Their course is precisely that which those who put a 
high valuation upon the apostolical succession of the 
ministry would have pursued, and which those who 
hold such views as Dr. Whately's would have been 
careful not to pursue. They would have avoided an 
enactment which would seem to call in question the 
lawfulness of any arrangements which any " regular 
Christian communities" had made, and which, according 
to Dr. Whately, they had a perfect right to make. They 
would have avoided giving countenance to the idea that 
any outward institutions descending from apostolic ap- 
pointment were on that account to be continued and 
reverently used and esteemed in the Christian Church. 
And it is significant of Dr. Whately's claim to coinci- 
dence with the Anglican reformers, that he has quoted 
the general language of the Article, and said nothing of 
the specific limitation of the preface to the Ordinal on 
the very same subject. The mere terms of the Article 
happen to suit, or not to contradict his ideas, which is 
not the case with these terms as defined and explained 
in the preface. 



CHAPTER II. 

CERTAIN OBJECTIONS OF DR. WHATELY TO " CHURCH 
principles" CONSIDERED. 

Dr. Whately has a special aversion to the advocacy 
of what are termed " Church principles." Those who 
maintain them, he conceives, are building on a founda- 
tion of sand, but more and worse than this, — he says, 
they are " compelled, as it were with their own hands, 
to dig away even that very foundation of sand."* They 
do this in the first place, he thinks, because they " make 
essentials of points confessedly not found in Scripture," 
and thus require as necessary articles of faith, things 
which our Church does not deem necessary, because 
they are not contained in Scripture. 

Now, in the first place, in making this charge, Dr. 
Whately takes for granted what is by no means admit- 
ted, that the points alluded to are not contained in Scrip- 
ture. This would not be granted him by any advocates 
of "Church Principles." His whole objection there- 
fore is a petitio principii. 

But in the next place, the advocates of " Church 
Principles" require no points to be believed as articles 
of necessary faith, but those which are contained in the 
Catholic creeds. Of these creeds one of the articles is 
that which relates to the Holy Catholic Church. A 

*Page 129. 

4* 



t 

38 CERTAIN OBJECTIONS OF WHATELY TO 

belief in this is a necessary point of Christian faith,— 
and a right belief concerning the Church, its ministry, 
and its ordinances, is necessary to right Christian faith. 
Men however may have incorrect views concerning the 
Christian sacraments, who, we trust and believe, are 
nevertheless blessed in the devout use of them ; but 
this does not disprove the importance of right and reve- 
rend views of those holy ordinances. And so men may 
have erroneous views of the Christian ministry, and 
may even reject that ministry which God has ordained, 
whose error, because it is not wilful, we trust God will 
pardon : but this does not lessen our obligation to adhere 
to that ministry, or render those who insist upon adher- 
ence to it, as to an essential part of the Christian scheme, 
obnoxious to the charge of requiring as essential what 
God has not thus designated. Doctrines or ordinances 
may be essentials so far as they are constituent parts of 
God's revealed plan of salvation, and if this be the case, 
it is our duty thus to insist upon them. He may how- 
ever exceed the bounds which he has prescribed to us, 
and cause his grace to overflow its allotted channels, but 
that we are not authorized to teach men to expect. We 
are to point out to them the ordained way and to say to 
them This is the way, walk ye in it. We are thus to 
present as essentials what, nevertheless, God in his wis- 
dom and mercy, under circumstances only known and 
judged of by Himself, may dispense with. 

But Dr. Whately further argues that the " Church 
Principles," which he condemns, exclude the persons 
who advocate them, not only from our own Church, but 
from the Universal Church, — and this, because the insti- 
tutions and practices of our own and of every other 



11 CHURCH PRINCIPLES" CONSIDERED. 39 

Church in the world " are, in several points, not pre- 
cisely coincident with those of the earliest churches." 
He instances the cases of "The Agapse," " or Love- 
Feasts," " The Widows" or deaconesses of " the ear- 
liest churches," and the difference between the office of 
Deacon, as it now exists, and as it was when it was 
originally instituted. But surely no advocates of 
" Church Principles" maintain that in all things, great 
and small, circumstantials and essentials, we should 
closely adhere to the primitive Church, or even to the 
practice of the Apostles themselves. On this subject 
the 34th Article of the Church is explicit: "It is not 
necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places 
one, or utterly like ; for at all times they have been 
divers, and may be changed according to the diversity of 
countries, times, and men's manners, so that nothing be 
ordained against God's word." 

Now this is the principle which Dr. Whately adopts 
in regard to all outward institutions except the sacra- 
ments, but which the Article applies to a certain class, a 
class which it clearly defines. " Every Particular or 
National Church hath authority to ordain, change, and 
abolish Ceremonies or Rites of the Church, ordained 
only by man's authority, so that all things be done to 
edifying." But over the divine institutions of the 
Church the Article clearly implies that she has no such 
power. This important distinction Dr. Whately entirely 
neglects. In the second section of the fourth book of 
Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, there is an admirable 
argument on this subject, in which he shows that cir- 
cumstantial differences from the Church of the Apos- 
tles is both allowed and required by change of time and 
circumstance. 



40 CERTAIN OBJECTIONS 01 WIIATELY TO 

How then, it will be asked, shall we distinguish those 
Apostolic Institutions, which were designed to be per- 
petual, from those which were intended to be local and 
temporary. We answer, by evidence. By the evi- 
dence, in the first place, of the Apostles' writings ; by 
the principles there laid down which are applicable to 
the institutions of the Church, such as the principle 
which inculcates the necessity of a clearly traceable 
divine call to the ministry, and which is applicable only 
to the ministry of apostolic succession, and the rule 
" let all things be done decently, and in order," which 
is a general rule for the direction of the churches in their 
regulations of worship, and is applicable to various 
forms of worship that come up to the terms of the rule. 

Another source of evidence is the nature of the Insti- 
tutions themselves which may be in question. Thus 
the provision in the apostolic ministry for its own per- 
petuation, is a clear and positive proof that the Apostles 
designed it to be perpetual. Their having left forms of 
worship to be provided by their successors in the 
churches, and their neglect to transmit any 'one form to 
the Church of succeeding ages are proofs that they did 
not design any one form to be in perpetual use and obli- 
gation. Had they transmitted such a form we should 
have been bound to use it. 

The last means of distinguishing the perpetual insti- 
tutions of the Apostles from those which were tempo- 
rary, is the Universal Witness of the Church. This is 
the test of the 34th Article. "It is not necessary that 
Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, or 
utterly like." Why? The Article proceeds, "for at 
all times they have been divers*" The clear inference 



" CHURCH PRINCIPLES" CONSIDERED. 41 

is, that if at all times they had been the same we should 
be bound to maintain them. Those Institutions, there- 
fore, such as the Apostolic Ministry, which the Church 
in all times and places has maintained as of binding 
force, are thus shown to be of perpetual obligation. 
There are no such institutions, which have not their sup- 
port and foundation in Holy Scripture, although the 
Universal Witness of the Church may be the evidence 
to us of their perpetual obligation, and without that evi- 
dence there might be some excuse for rejecting them. 
Thus the sacraments have their warrant in Scripture, 
although the universal faith and practice of the Church 
are the clear evidence of their designed perpetuity. We 
might infer the Baptism of Infants from Scripture, but 
how unanswerable is that inference rendered by the 
witness and practice of the Church. We have therefore 
abundant means of discerning between the permanent 
and the temporary appointments of the Apostles, and 
it is by neglecting these means of information and con- 
founding circumstantials and essentials, that Dr. Whately 
has framed an objection against " Church Principles," 
which vanishes when proper distinctions are drawn. 

He further instances the separation which " Church 
Principles" make of their advocates from the Universal 
Church in the difference between Modern Bishops and 
Primitive Bishops. In the early churches, each Church 
had a single Bishop, but now, says Dr. Whately, " Epis- 
copalians themselves have, universally, so far varied from 
the apostolical institutions as to have in one Church seve- 
ral Bishops ; each of whom consequently differs in the 
office he holds, in a most important point, from one of 
the primitive Bishops, as much as the Governors of any 



42 CERTAIN OBJECTIONS OF WHATELY TO 

one of our colonies does from a sovereign prince."* 
And then he proceeds to apply his objection in these 
words : " Now, whether the several alterations and de- 
partures from the original institutions, were or were not, 
in each instance, made on good grounds, in accordance 
with an altered state of society, is a question which can- 
not even be entertained by those who hold that no 
church is competent to vary at all from the ancient mo- 
del. Their principle would go to exclude at once from 
the pale of Christ's Church almost every Christian body 
since the first two or three centuries. The edifice they 
overthrow crushes in its fall the blind champion who has 
broken its pillars."! 

When Dr. Whately speaks of "several Bishops" 
" in our Church," he refers to such organizations as the 
Anglican and American churches. But such associa- 
tions certainly do not destroy or interfere with the primi- 
tive model. They are in fact combinations, by man's 
authority, of distinct integral churches or dioceses, each 
ruled by its own Bishop, its divinely appointed Head, a 
single Bishop to a single church or diocese, as, accord- 
ing to Dr. Whately himself, it was in the primitive day. 
Such a combination of churches is called a Church, but 
by the combination, the distinctness of the several 
churches combined, and the divine right of their Bishops 
are not destroyed. 

The advocates of " Church Principles" do not main- 
tain that the circumstantials of the office of Bishop, 
such as the extent of dioceses, the worldly standing of 
Bishops, or the connexion of Bishops with each other 
in Provincial Synods, or "churches," (to use Dr. W.'s 

* Page 133. \ Page 133. 



" CHURCH PRINCIPLES CONSIDERED. 43 

phrase,) may not change, but that the essentials of the 
office must be and have been retained. These essen- 
tials are supreme jurisdiction, the regular and lineal 
transmission, by the power of ordination, of ministerial 
authority from Christ in the Church, and the pastoral 
care of ministers and people. So long as these are pre- 
served, the essence of the office is preserved. Most 
pregnant is the sentence of St. Jerome, " Wheresoever 
there may have been a Bishop, whether at Rome or at 
Eugubium ; whether at Constantinople or at Rhegium ; 
whether at Alexandria or at Tanis, he is of the same 
worth, and the same priesthood. The power of riches, 
the lowliness of poverty, makes not a Bishop more ele- 
vated or more depressed. All are successors of the 
Apostles." 

Let us keep in view the distinction made as we have 
seen by our own Church, between divine and human 
appointments in the Church, as well as that between the 
temporary and the permanent institutions of the Apos- 
tles, let us keep in view the means of testing these dis- 
tinctions, — Scripture, — the nature of the institutions 
themselves, — and the universal witness of the Church, 
— and we shall be at no loss in following the Apostles 
as they followed Christ, and shall easily turn aside such 
weak and ill-founded objections as those of Dr. Whately, 
which we have been considering, to " Church Princi- 
ples." 



44 SCRIPTURAL 1.V1DLNCJ. OF 



CHAPTER III. 

SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE OF AN APOSTOLICAL EPISCOPACY. 

In our examination of the argument of Dr. Whately, 
from the assumed " omissions" of Scripture, we rea- 
soned upon his own premises, and endeavoured to show 
that they did not sustain his conclusions. We now pro- 
pose to show that the scantiness of detail, of which he 
speaks with regard to the Christian ministry, does not 
exist in Scripture, and that there is abundant scriptural 
warrant for the ministry of Apostolic succession. 

So distinguished a theologian as Dr. Dwight has 
strangely mistaken, in the outset of his argument on this 
subject, the state of the question, where he says, " that 
the office of apostle was an extraordinary one, which 
was of temporary continuance, all admit." Now, all 
do not admit this ; it never has been admitted in the 
Church. The voice of all Christian antiquity, the voice 
of nineteen-twentieths of the Christian world, at the 
present day, proclaims the bishops, the chief pastors of 
the flock, to be successors of the Apostles in every 
essential of the Apostolic office. 

It is undoubtedly easy for one to make a fair argument 
against an apostolical episcopacy, who begins, like Dr. 
Dwight, by begging the whole question at issue, but 
this is the usual complexion of the argument on that 
side of the question. It assumes it& own positions, or 



AN APOSTOLICAL EPISCOPACY. 45 

it endeavors to fortify itself by concessions which the 
advocates of episcopacy have not the slightest objection 
to make. For example, much stress is laid upon the 
fact, that Presbyters in the New Testament are also 
called Bishops. This we freely grant, for we do not 
contend for names, but for things. Names, which are 
now appropriated to distinct orders of ministers, are 
used promiscuously of all in Scripture. There the 
Apostles themselves are styled Presbyters and Deacons, 
and more frequently called Deacons than they are Pres- 
byters. Our blessed Lord has in Scripture the three 
names Apostle, Bishop and Deacon, applied to Him. 
So that if the indiscriminate use of terms proves that 
the office of Presbyter is the same with that which is 
now known as the office of Bishop, it would prove also 
that the office of Deacon and that of Apostle are one 
and the same. 

We do not contend that there was always an order of 
chief ministers in the Church that were called Bishops, 
but that that order of chief ministers, whom we now 
call Bishops, was always in the Church. They were 
originally called Apostles, but afterwards the term 
Bishop, which used to be applied to a lower order in 
the ministry, became appropriated to them. The term 
Pastor was applied exclusively to Bishops for six hun- 
dred years in the Church, and we might as well argue 
that for those six hundred years there were no parish- 
priests in the Church, (for the term Pastor is now 
usually theirs) as that there were no Bishops in the 
early Church, because the term Bishop was not exclu- 
sively applied to those chief ministers whom we now 
call Bishops. 

5 



46 SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE OF 

Such is one of the strongest arguments drawn from 
Scripture by the opponents of episcopacy, and such is 
the worth of it. 

But we enter without further delay upon the main 
argument from Scripture for episcopacy, or the per- 
petual apostolate of the Church. And it will not 
be necessary to prove that the first or inspired Apostles 
had a pre-eminence of some kind in the Church, for 
this all admit. Those certainly admit it, who say that 
this superiority was temporary and ceased with the 
death of the inspired Apostles, and those will not be 
disposed to deny it, "who maintain that the office of 
Apostle has been transmitted from age to age to the 
Bishops, the successors of the Apostles. 

All admit then that the Apostles of Scripture possess- 
ed a superiority in the Church. In what did this supe- 
riority consist? Not certainly in the extraordinary 
powers of prophecy and speaking with tongues and 
working miracles. There were prophets, who were 
not Apostles ; the prophets are expressly mentioned in 
the epistle to the Ephesians as a distinct class from the 
Apostles, and the daughters of Philip the Deacon pro- 
phesied ; that the gift of tongues was a gift to ordinary 
Christians we know from the transactions on the day of 
Pentecost, and from the first epistle to the Corinthians, 
and deacons had the power of working miracles, for 
Stephen and Philip are expressly said to work mira- 
cles.* It is not then in these miraculous endowments 
that we can find the superiority of the Apostles. 

A theory has been devised to account for the supe- 
riority of the Apostles, which makes it consist in their 
* Acts vi. 8. Acts viii. 6, 7. 



AN APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. 47 

being chosen eye-witnesses of the resurrection of Christ. 
But if this be true, St. Paul must be excluded from the 
blessed company of Apostles ; for he excludes himself 
from the number of chosen eye-witnesses of the resur- 
rection. In the address which St. Paul made to the 
people of Antioch in Pisidia, he alluded to the resurrec- 
tion of Christ in these words, "But God raised him 
from the dead : And he was seen many days of them 
which came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, 
which are his witnesses unto the people."* Why did 
not St. Paul, if in his character of Apostle he was a 
chosen eye-witness of the resurrection, at least include 
himself among the number of the witnesses ? Was he 
not recreant to his duty — did he not virtually abandon 
his office in not exercising it on this occasion, when he 
was speaking of the resurrection, if in his character of 
Apostle he was a chosen eye-witness of the resurrection, 
and if his superiority as an Apostle consisted in this ? 
Those, of whom the Apostle speaks as having come up 
with Christ from Galilee to Jerusalem were not only the 
twelve Apostles, but also the women, who attended our 
Lord, who are said, Matt. 27, 55, to have " followed 
Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto Him," and proba- 
bly also the five hundred brethren, of whom the Apostle 
speaks in 1 Cor. xv. 6. These the Apostle told the people 
of Antioch were his witnesses unto the people, because 
they had seen the Lord " many days" upon earth, after 
his resurrection. Since then, the women, who accom- 
panied our Lord, and the five hundred brethren, who 
saw him, after he was risen from the dead, were equally 
with the Apostles, eye-witnesses of the resurrection, 
* Acts xiii. 30, 31. 



48 SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE OF 

and are spoken of as being with the Apostles, " His 
witnesses unto the people," and since moreover St. 
Paul does not include himself in the number of these 
witnesses, it is most evident that the superiority of the 
Apostles did not consist in their being chosen eye-wit- 
nesses of the resurrection. 

But if we can discover any circumstances of the 
apostolic office, which were not common to the Apos- 
tles with any other class of men in the Church, in these 
circumstances we must place the superiority of the 
Apostles as such. 

And first we assert that the Apostles possessed the 
power of ordination, which belonged to no other class 
of men. That the Apostles ordained no one has ever 
denied. The seven deacons were nominated by the 
brethren, but were ordained by the Apostles, and de- 
rived their authority from them. And Paul and Barna- 
bas ordained elders in the churches, which they had 
established by their preaching. And there is no evi- 
dence from Scripture that any but Apostles possessed 
the power of ordaining. 

There are but two instances of ordination by others 
pretended. One is, the setting apart of Paul and Bar» 
nabas for a special mission, by certain persons at An- 
tioch, who are called prophets and teachers ; the other 
is that passage of St. Paul's first epistle to Timothy,* 
which speaks of the gift that was in Timothy by pro- 
phecy with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. 

But neither of these instances disproves the assertion 
that so far as appears from the pages of Scripture, 
Apostles only ordained. 

• 1 Tim. iv. 14. 



AN APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. 49 

The first transaction was certainly not an ordination, 
for Paul was an Apostle before he was set apart for this 
special missionary work by the immediate command of 
the Holy Ghost. Paul says of himself* that he was an 
Apostle, not of men, neither by man. Of course he 
could not have been ordained on the occasion of which 
we are speaking. 

And the other instance alleged from the epistle to 
Timothy, is equally inconclusive. The Apostles are 
called in Scripture, Presbyters. St. Peter and St. John 
both apply to themselves this name, and it never can be 
shown that the presbytery which ordained Timothy was 
not entirely composed of Apostles. On the other hand, 
there is proof that it was so composed. There is no 
instance in Scripture, leaving out of view that in ques- 
tion, in which any but Apostles ordained ; St. Paul him- 
self was one of the presbytery, which ordained Timothy 
— ("stir up the gift of God which is in thee, by the 
putting on of my hands,"!) ; the analogy of Scripture 
therefore shows that this presbytery consisted of Apos- 
tles ; the only member of it whom we know, was an 
Apostle, and as we shall presently prove, Timothy was 
of an order in the ministry superior to the presbyters 
of Ephesus, over whom he was set, and therefore 
from such presbyters of inferior power could not have 
received his ordination. 

The presbytery therefore, which ordained him, was 
composed of Apostles, or Bishops, in our sense of that 
word ; and we way add that this view is corroborated 
by the unanimous voice of antiquity on this passage, the 
Latin fathers explaining the word presbytery or presby- 

*Gal.i.T. t'3'Thn. 1.'6« 

5* 



50 SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE OF 

terate of the office of Bishop, to which Timothy was 
elevated, and the Greek fathers interpreting it the col- 
lege of Apostles, who ordained him to the episcopate. 

And yet if we should grant, against the v/hole tenor 
of Scripture and antiquity, that mere Presbyters con- 
curred in this ordination, (which in that case must be 
understood of an ordination to the Presbyter ate ^) the 
advocates of a modern Presbyterian ordination that never 
had any validity in the ancient Church would gain no- 
thing; for the ordaining power in the case of Timothy 
proceeded from the Apostle; "by the putting on of my 
hands," it is said, "with the laying on of the hands of 
the presbytery," to express their concurrence in the act 
of power, whose virtue came from the imposition of 
apostolic hands. 

Ordination of ministers was therefore one of the 
powers, in which the superiority of the office of Apos- 
tle consisted. 

Another was Confirmation, or laying hands on those 
who had been baptized, that they might receive the Holy 
Ghost. When Philip, the Deacon, had converted and 
baptized the men of Samaria, although he was a man of 
high spiritual endowments, and one who wrought mira- 
cles, he did not take it upon him to confirm those whom 
he had baptized, but "when the Apostles which were 
at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word 
of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: Who, 
when they were come down, prayed for them, that they 
might receive the Holy Ghost : For as yet he was fallen 
upon none of them ; only they were baptized in the 
name of the Lord Jesus. Then laid they their hands on 
them, and they received the Holy Ghost."* 
* Acts viii. 14—17. 



AN APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. 51 

Philip, the Deacon, could not confirm, but it was ne- 
cessary that Apostles from Jerusalem should be sent for 
this purpose. And so St. Paul, on one occasion, is 
recorded to have laid his hands and conferred the Holy 
Ghost on twelve persons, who had just been baptized.* 
So that the power of confirmation as well as that of 
ordination was appropriated to the office of Apostle. 

And lastly, the Apostles had general jurisdiction over 
ministers and churches. They were commissioned by 
Christ to establish and rule the Church, and for this 
purpose full powers were entrusted to them. Jesus said 
to them after his resurrection, " as my Father hath sent 
me, even so send I you." This was a commission suf- 
ficiently full and ample, and under this they acted in the 
regulations, which they made for the establishment of 
the Church. That the Apostles possessed power over 
the elders of the Church appears from many proofs. 
St. John, in his epistle to Gaius, says that he will, if he 
comes, remember the deeds of Diotrephes, who seems 
to have been an ambitious Presbyter, that loved to have 
the pre-eminence, and had set himself in opposition to 
the Apostle. St. Paul speaks of the care of all the 
churches, which devolved upon him ; and how great 
authority he possessed in regulating all the affairs of the 
churches that he founded, is evident from his epistles to 
those churches, where the most minute circumstances 
which concerned their well-being were among the sub- 
jects of his injunctions. "For though," he says, "I 
should boast somewhat more of our authority, which 
the Lord hath given us for edification, and not for your 
destruction, I should not be ashamed."! " I told you 
* Acts xix. 1-7 f 2 Cor. x. 8. 



52 SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE OF 

before, and foretell you, as if I were present, the second 
time; and being absent now I write to them which here- 
tofore have sinned, and to all other, that, if I come again, 
1 will not spare."* See also 2 Cor. xiii. 10, 1 Cor. iv. 
19, 20, 21, 1 Tim. i. 20, 1 Cor. v. 3, 4, 5, 1 Cor. xi. 
34, last clause. St. Paul gave his charge to the elders 
of Ephesus, (Acts 20,) as one, who had authority over 
them, and in all his epistles he speaks as one having 
authority. 

Let us now sum up the results which we have ob- 
tained. We have seen that the Apostles had the powers 
of ordaining and confirming, which belonged to no other 
class of men in the Church, and that they had jurisdic- 
tion over ministers and people in the churches which 
they founded, and we discover nothing else in Scripture 
to mark their superiority. Their superiority was there- 
fore one of office, or ordinary ministerial superiority. 

And we say that such superiority as this, that is, that 
the office of Apostle was intended to be perpetual in the 
Church. If it had not been, why should additions 
have been made to the original number of Apostles. 
Barnabas and Timothy and Silas, were all Apostles, and 
are so called in Scripture. t St. James the brother of 
our Lord, not one of the original twelve, was the settled 
Apostle or Bishop of Jerusalem, as is most abundantly 
evident from Scripture. He is spoken of (Acts xxi. 18) 
as presiding in the company of elders at Jerusalem. He 
is expressly called one of the Apostles, (Gal. i. 19,) 
" But other of the Apostles saw I none, save James the 
Lord's brother." And certain Christians, (in all proba- 

* 2 Cor. xiii. 2. 

f Acts xiv. 14. 1 Thess. i. 1, compared with 1 Thess. ii. 6. 



AN APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. 53 

bility elders) who had come to Antioch from Jerusalem, 
are spoken of as " certain," which " came from James," 
(Gal. ii. 12.) So that from Scripture alone it is evident, 
that James was, what ancient testimony represents him 
to have been, the Apostle or Bishop of the Church of 
Jerusalem. 

And so Epaphroditus was the Apostle or Bishop of 
the Philippians, and is so designated in the epistle to the 
Philippians, (Phil. ii. 25.) The words which are ren- 
dered "your messenger," signify "your Apostle." 
That the Apostle meant to designate the apostolic office 
of Epaphroditus, is clear from the terms in which he 
speaks of him in this very connexion, " my brother, 
and companion in labor, and fellow soldier," and also 
from the strength and tenderness of the relation, which, 
as appears from the verses following that in which 
Epaphroditus is termed the Apostle of Philippi, sub- 
sisted between him and the people of his charge. The 
prevailing usage of the New Testament assigns to 
aitoGtoxof when used there, its strict technical sense, a 
sense from which we are not to depart except in a case 
of clear necessity. If the apostolic office were not de- 
signed to be continued, why should Matthias have been 
consecrated to fill the place, or the bishopric as it is 
called, (Acts i. 20) of the apostate Judas ? If the office 
of Apostle were extraordinary and temporary, it is most 
clear that as the Apostles were removed, none would 
have been elected to supply their places, and then where 
would have been the promise, "lo I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world." 

Let us examine each of the powers in which the supe- 
riority of the Apostles consisted, and see how necessarily 
perpetuity must be one of its characteristics. 



54 SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE OF 

And first, the Apostles, we have seen, possessed the 
power of ordination, which other ministers did not pos- 
sess. Now the direct object of such a power as this 
must be to perpetuate the ministry, and if the power has 
not been continued in succeeding times, then there is 
no succession of a divinely-appointed ministry in the 
Church. So that the power of ordination, by the very 
nature of it, must be designed to be perpetual, and to be 
handed down from age to age, to men to whom it is ex- 
pressly committed. It was intended to preserve the 
Church from error and destruction by means of a min- 
istry, called of God as was Aaron, and must therefore 
be transmitted to successors of the Apostles through all 
ages of the Church. 

Nor can it be said that all ministers are successors of 
the Apostles for this purpose, for in the days of the 
Apostles there were inferior ministers, but only Apostles 
had the power of ordination, and therefore the succes- 
sors of ordinary inferior ministers could not possess the 
power which their predecessors had not. So that the 
conclusion still remains, if there is yet power in the 
Church to perpetuate a divinely-appointed ministry, 
there must be in the Church successors of the Apostles 
superior to other ministers, to whom this power belongs, 
and that part of the apostolic office which consisted in 
the power of ordination was therefore, in the very na- 
ture of it, a permanent power in the Church. 

Indeed the apostolic office is the only one which pro- 
ceeds from the direct commission of the Saviour. 
Presbyters and deacons were constituted by the Apos- 
tles to assist them in their work. If that office then 
which rests on direct divine commission be denied per- 



AN APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION'. 55 

petuity, how can we maintain the perpetuity of those 
inferior offices which depend upon it ; that is, how can 
we maintain the continuance of any divinely-appointed 
ministry in the Church of God ? 

Let us next turn to the power of confirmation. Con- 
firmation was a rite which was designed to be perpetual 
in the Church, for it is classed in the epistle to the He- 
brews among the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, 
but in apostolic days we have seen from Scripture that 
only Apostles had the power to confirm ; so that if con- 
firmation is to be a perpetual ordinance there must 
always be an order of ministers superior to presbyters, 
who have power to administer it ; in other words, this 
part of the apostolic office was designed to last as long 
as the Church itself. 

And we shall arrive at the same conclusion in refer- 
ence to the jurisdiction of the Apostles over ministers 
and people, — for if this jurisdiction were not continued 
in its original form, or authoritatively transferred to some 
other officers, or to some bodies of men to whom it did 
not originally belong, all jurisdiction which is exercised 
by one class of men over another in the Church, would 
be a matter of mere human regulation. That the juris- 
diction which the Apostles possessed over ministers and 
people, has been transferred to other classes of men, 
such as synods or assemblies of presbyters, cannot be 
proved and hardly pretended ; and if it exists at all it 
exists in its original state, and there must be a class of 
men who may now rightfully exercise the very jurisdic- 
tion of the Apostles. And those may believe that this 
apostolic jurisdiction has not been continued in the 
Church, who can believe that the Church is governed 
by human rather than by divine authority. 



56 SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE OF 

Indeed there is the same necessity for the general 
supervision which the Apostles exercised in the Church, 
that there ever was, — the same danger of heresy and 
schism, — the same danger from false and ambitious 
teachers, — the same need of some centres of apostolic 
unity and efficient action. The office of Apostle has 
been demanded by the same exigencies in every age of 
the Church, for which God provided it in the first age ; 
and as the exigency is perpetual we must suppose that 
the provision for it was also perpetual. 

Let it be remembered that it was not in being inspired, 
or in the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit that the supe- 
riority of the Apostles, as such, consisted, for in these 
their ministerial and lay-brethren shared with them, but 
that it consisted in their ordinary ministerial superiority, 
— in functions which in their sphere were as ordinary 
ones, as much a part of the common system of things 
in the Church as those of presbyters were ; and there 
is therefore as much reason for supposing the office of 
Apostle to be perpetual, as that of presbyter, and as 
much reason for supposing that of presbyter extraordi- 
nary and temporary as that of Apostle. Both, in fact, 
were ordinary offices in the early Church, though one 
was superior to the other, and both, therefore, were de- 
signed to be handed down to all succeeding ages. 

Could we proceed no farther in the argument from 
Scripture, we should have abundant scriptural warranty 
for the ecclesiastical government which we enjoy; for 
we have shown that all the powers, which rendered the 
Apostles superior to all orders of men in the Church, 
were intended to be perpetual, that their superiority, 
being an ordinary ministerial one, we must suppose 



AN APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. 57 

their office to be as perpetual as any, of which there is 
no evidence that it was extraordinary ; nay, more, we 
have shown that their office alone rests on direct divine 
commission, and that consequently those who deny the 
perpetuity of such an office, remove the basis which 
supports the inferior ministries of the Church, and leave 
it without a divinely-established government. If what 
our Saviour established, and endowed with his promise 
of perpetual presence and support be not permanent, 
the appointments of his Apostles cannot be. 

Now, on the belief of the perpetuity of the Apostolic 
office, our Church is organized. Our Bishops we be- 
lieve to be the successors of the Apostles, and they have 
the same superiority to other ministers in the powers of 
ordination, confirmation, and jurisdiction, which the 
Apostles had in the early Church. This conformity is 
not of our own making — but the Church government, 
under which we live, has been transmitted to us from 
those who lived before us, and to them from the fathers 
of olden time ; and when remembering the manner in 
which we have received, not made, our form of gov- 
ernment, we bring it to the test of Scripture, and find a 
wonderful correspondence in our own actual state with 
the delineations of the Bible ; find in the Apostles of 
Scripture our own Bishops, and find, moreover, that the 
office of the Apostle was designed by the very nature of 
it to be perpetual, we can hardly fail to discover the 
hand of God in all this, and cannot but conclude that 
our institutions, thus corresponding with Scripture, are 
of divine origin and permanent obligation. 

But, then, we can learn more from Scripture than that 
the office of Apostle is, in its nature and design, per- 

6 



58 SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE OF 

petual. We can discover in Scripture the first links of 
those golden chains of Apostolic succession which have 
connected the Church of every age with the Church of 
the first age. We can learn from Scripture that the 
Apostles actually provided for the perpetuation of their 
own office, by ordaining men over particular churches 
who should exercise those powers over those churches, 
which the Apostles themselves exercised far and wide 
in the churches which they founded. 

Thus Timothy was ordained by St. Paul Bishop of 
the church of Ephesus, and the epistles of Paul to 
Timothy are letters of instruction how to conduct him- 
self in his episcopal office. In the charge which Paul 
gave, (before either of these episiles were written, ac- 
cording to the most probable computation,) to the elders 
of the church at Ephesus, as recorded in the 20th chap- 
ter of Acts, he exhorts them to be diligent in feeding 
the Church of God, and to excite them to greater dili- 
gence in their work, he tells them, that after his depart- 
ing should grievous wolves enter in among them, not 
sparing the flock, and that of their own number men 
should arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away 
disciples after them. But all they were to do in these 
emergencies was to watch, and remember the warnings 
of the Apostle while he was among them. There is not 
the slightest hint that they possessed the power to 
banish, by the exercise of discipline, the false teachers 
that were to arise in the Ephesian church. They were 
simply to strive against errors, by the discharge of their 
pastoral duties, which alone were their appropriate 
duties. 

But the power which Timothy possessed in the 



AN APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. 59 

church of Ephesus was very different from this. He 
was to oppose error by the sword of discipline. He 
was to receive accusations against elders as their supe- 
rior and judge.* He was to charge some that they 
taught no other than sound doctrine. t He was to rebuke 
openly them that sinned. ± He was to discountenance 
heretics, § to ordain bishops or presbyters, and deacons, || 
and to regulate both doctrine and discipline in the 
Church. He had, and he exercised to the day of his 
death, for aught that appears to the contrary from Scrip- 
ture, and as is attested by the clear voice of history, the 
full powers of Apostle in the Church of Ephesus. The 
Apostles thus actually provided for the perpetuity of 
their office in the church of Ephesus, by transmitting it 
to one of their successors, to be in like manner handed 
down to succeeding times. And it is to be noticed that 
the charge to Timothy was not meant for him exclu- 
sively, but was directly given to the successors of the 
Apostles in the episcopal office till the end of time : 
" That thou keep this commandment without spot, un- 
rebukable until the appearing of our Lord Jesus 
Christ."^ 

As Timothy was appointed Bishop of Ephesus by 
the Apostles, Titus was in like manner entrusted with 
episcopal jurisdiction over all the churches in the exten- 
sive island of Crete, as we learn from the epistle, in 
which St. Paul instructs him how to act in his office. 
From that epistle we perceive that Titus had power to 
ordain elders in every city,** to prescribe to all classes 

* 1 Tim. v. 19. f 1 Tim. i. 3. +1 Tim. v. 20, 21. 

§ 1 Tim. 6, 5. || 1 Tim. v. 22, compared with ch. iii. 

If 1 Tim. vi. 14. ** Tit. i. 5. 



60 SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE OF 

of men in the Church the bounds of their duty,* to re- 
ject heretics, after he had admonished them without 
efTect,t in short, to regulate all the affairs of the Cretan 
churches after the rules of sound doctrine and apostolic 
discipline. There were, or there were to be other min- 
isters in the Church of Crete, but over them all Titus 
was to exercise the office of an Apostle and Bishop. 

We perceive, therefore, that the Apostles, when they 
were about leaving the world, made provision for the 
continuance of Apostolic authority in the Church, by 
appointing successors in their office. 

Nor can it be pretended that these successors were 
appointed for temporary purposes, for if no man could 
exercise these high powers in apostolic days without 
deriving them from those who had authority to transmit 
them, no man can now exercise them without thus de- 
riving them. Ordinary presbyters have not succeeded 
to powers which their predecessors in apostolic days 
did not possess, and the Church is thus left without the 
powers of ordination, confirmation, and government 
over her ministers and people ; in fact she is left with- 
out ministers, and without a right to banish error by the 
exercise of discipline, if there are no successors of the 
apostles, who derive their power from the Apostles. 

If it was necessary in the day of Timothy and Titus 
that men, furnished with all the authority of the apos- 
tolic office, should ordain ministers and regulate the 
affairs of the churches, it is equally necessary now, and 
if there are not such men in the Church, then has she 
no divinely appointed ministry, and no power to correct 
the most flagrant abuses. 

* Tit. ii. 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10. Tit. Hi. 1,2. f Tit. iii. 10, 11. 



AN APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. 61 

But Scripture has not left us to our own inferences, 
however clear as to the necessity and permanency of 
the apostolic office in the Church. Among the last and 
the most delightful pictures which the Word of God 
presents to us in those sweet, and awful, and magnifi- 
cent strains which are found in the book of Revelation, 
is the picture of large and flourishing churches establish- 
ed under the government of successors of the Apostles, 
as a settled part of their constitution. All who have 
read cannot but remember those burning admonitions 
and exhortations addressed to the seven churches of 
Asia from Christ himself, through St. John, the only 
survivor of the twelve Apostles, the man who was to 
tarry till Christ came, and who was the honored instru- 
ment of these messages to the permanent successors of 
the Apostles in the seven churches to whom the mes- 
sages were sent. 

The churches are represented under the emblems of 
golden candlesticks, and each one of them was lighted 
by a star, under which emblem was represented the 
angel of the Church — and these stars were held in the 
ri«ht hand of the Son of Man, who was in the midst of 
the seven candlesticks, to intimate that the stars derived 
their light and power from him. 

Now we know that in the church of Ephesus there 
was a body of ministers, for St. Paul had addressed the 
elders of Ephesus nearly half a century before the mes- 
sage was sent from Christ to the angel of that church, 
and Timothy, after that address of St. Paul, had it in 
charge to ordain more presbyters and deacons, to sup- 
ply the increasing wants of the Church, and no doubt at 
the time when the messages were sent to the seven 

6* 



62 SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE OF 

churches the body of ministers was much larger in the 
Church of Ephesus than it was when Paul wrote his 
epistle to Timothy. And in each of these churches 
there were unquestionably many ministers, for they 
were all planted in large and flourishing cities, and pro- 
bably contained great numbers of Christians who would 
need a proportional supply of ministers. The Church 
of Laodicea was once the mother-church of sixteen 
bishoprics ; and indeed the whole tenor of the messages 
to the seven churches shows that they were extensive 
churches. 

But the messages were not sent to the ministers of the 
churches collectively, nor to the churches themselves. 
They were indeed intended for the churches, but were 
addressed each one to the Angel of the Church to which 
it was sent. These angels then must have been the 
chief ministers, or Apostles, or Bishops of the churches, 
and have occupied the same places in them and exer- 
cised the same authority over ministers and people, 
which we have seen that Timothy and Titus occupied 
and exercised respectively in the churches of Ephesus 
and Crete. Indeed it is not at all improbable that Timo- 
thy was the angel of the Church of Ephesus, to whom 
the message was sent. Tradition speaks confidently of 
his having continued in the office of Bishop of Ephesus 
till near the close of the first century. 

It will be noticed that in the messages the angels are 
identified with the churches over which they presided. 
They are held responsible for the errors which were in 
their churches, and were urged to remove them. The 
candlesticks were their candlesticks. Thus it is said to 
the angel of the Church of Ephesus, Repent, or else I 



AN APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. 63 

will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy can- 
dlestick out of his place, except thou repent ; and so to 
the angel of the Church in Sardis it is said, Thou hast 
a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their 
garments. 

So that these churches which possessed other and 
inferior ministers were placed in the possession of the 
angels for all the purposes of government and edifica- 
tion, and the angels were held responsible to Christ for 
the condition of their churches. One of the last views 
then which Scripture gives is that of the Church organ- 
ized under the successors of the Apostles as its perma- 
nent governors, endowed with all the powers of Apos- 
tles in the churches over which they presided. 

To sum up then the argument from Scripture, we 
have shown that the office of Apostle was an ordinary 
ministerial office of the highest grade in the Church, 
and was as much to be continued as that of Presbyter ; 
that in fact, by the very nature of its powers, it must 
have been designed for a permanent office, and that 
without the continuance of this office, a divinely-ap- 
pointed Ministry, and divinely authorized government, 
would cease in the Church, and the apostolic rite of 
confirmation, which the Apostle reckons among the first 
principles of Christianity could not be administered. 
We have shown further that the Apostles made actual 
provision for the continuance of this office, by appoint- 
ing over particular portions of the Church their own 
successors, furnished with all the powers of Apostles : 
and one of the last glimpses with which revelation in- 
dulges us before the curtain is dropped, is that of churches 



64 SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE OF 

settled in all the vigor of permanent apostolical or epis- 
copal government. 

And then one of the first sights which meet our eye, 
as we survey by the light of ecclesiastical history the 
Church as the Apostles left it, is that of primitive epis- 
copacy flourishing in all its glory and outward and 
inward beauty, when Bishops enrolled themselves in 
the noble army of martyrs, in imitation of the glorious 
company of Apostles their predecessors ; when Igna- 
tius, Bishop of Antioch, was led to Rome to be exposed 
to wild beasts, — and when Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, 
the angel of the Church of Smyrna, the connecting link 
between apostolic days and the days immediately suc- 
ceeding those of the Apostles, which were emphati- 
cally the days of primitive episcopacy, refused, with 
martyrdom full in view, to abjure the service of that 
master to whom, for fourscore years, he had faithfu ly 
adhered. 

But we are trenching upon ground which we have 
reserved for another chapter, and we hasten to a conclu- 
sion of the present. 

It may possibly occur to some that when we say the 
office of Bishop is the same with that of Apostle, that 
Apostles were not confined to one spot but exercised 
their jurisdiction far and wide, wherever they planted 
churches. It is true that the Apostles were bishops at 
large. Wherever they founded churches they governed 
them till their successors were appointed for this pur- 
pose. And this resulted from the very circumstances of 
the case, for the world must be converted before it could 
be divided into dioceses, and the Apostles must retain 
their jurisdiction till they could appoint fit men to exer- 



AN APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. 65 

cise, in particular portions of the Church, those powers 
which they exercised at large. But the powers were 
the same, whether exercised on a large or a small scale ; 
and the Apostles themselves provided that the Church 
should enjoy the full advantage of the apostolic office by 
assigning to their successors portions of the vineyard, 
which were so limited that they could cultivate them 
well. The Apostles themselves were the founders of 
diocesan episcopacy, for Ephesus was the diocese of 
Timothy, and Crete that of Titus, and each of the 
angels of the seven churches had his appropriate dio- 
cese, — but they all nevertheless had the power of Apos- 
tles within their own dioceses. 

But we will not conceal our desire to see the office of 
Apostle revived ; not in its original powers, for in those 
we have it already, but in the circumstances under 
which these powers were originally exercised ; and our 
Church has taken the first step thus to revive it, in the 
appointment of missionary bishops, and in the provision 
by canon for the appointment of bishops to exercise spi- 
ritual jurisdiction in places out of our own land ; and 
when the provisions of this canon are carried out, and 
the first missionary bishop leaves our shores for a hea- 
then land, then will our idea be realized, and the office 
of Apostle be revived in the glorious circumstances of 
its first existence ; then may the Church, under the ban- 
ners of Apostles, reap apostolic conquests in the heart 
of Satan's empire, and some new Apostle of the Gen- 
tiles, with the spirit of Paul in his breast, and the out- 
ward trials, which Paul exhibited as the credentials of 
his apostleship, as church after church springs up be- 
neath his steps of peace, as golden candlestick after can- 



66 SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE OF, ETC. 

dlestick is lighted in the darkness of heathenism, can 
realize in his own experience what Paul meant by the 
care of all the churches. Come speedily that day, when 
successors of the Apostles shall tread in the footsteps of 
the glorious company to which they belong, — for then 
the world will become the diocese of the Great Shep- 
herd and Bishop of souls. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HISTORICAL ARGUMENT FOR EPISCOPACY, AND THE PER- 
PETUITY OF APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 

We have shown in our consideration of the argument 
of Dr. Whately from " omissions," that adherence to 
the institutions which the Apostles established as consti- 
tuent parts of the Church, is incumbent on us by the 
authority of Scripture, however these institutions may 
be ascertained, and that adherence to the apostolic min- 
istry is especially our duty because this ministry contains 
a provision in itself for its own perpetuation. We have 
shown in the last chapter that Scripture contains full 
evidence of the nature of the apostolic ministry and of 
our obligation to receive it, and we come now to show 
that the conclusions we have drawn from Scripture are 
entirely warranted by the practice of the Church. 

The spirit of controversy is a spirit of perversion. It 
sees things through a medium which magnifies or dimin- 
ishes them, or alters their form according to its own 
pleasure. In nothing perhaps is this influence more 
apparent than in the necessity which is laid upon us, in 
these last ages of the Church, of proving what was its 
original form of government, and in the manner in 
which this necessity is laid upon us. At the time of the 
Reformation some of the Reformers found it convenient, 



68 HISTORICAL ARGUMENT 

or thought it necessary, to depart from the episcopal 
government of the Church, though they did not pretend 
that that was not the apostolical form of government. 
On the contrary, Calvin, Bullinger, and others, offered 
in a letter to King Edward VI. to make him their de- 
fender, and to have bishops in their churches, as they 
were in England. Calvin acknowledged that three 
kinds of ministers are commanded in Scripture, and that 
the bishops of the primitive Church framed their whole 
economy so cautiously in agreement with that only rule, 
the word of God, that there was evidently scarcely any 
thing different in this respect from the word of God. 
The Augsburg Confession, one of the public standards 
of the Lutherans, says, " The bishops might easily 
retain their legitimate obedience, if they would not urge 
us to observe traditions, which cannot be kept with a 
good conscience ;" and the Apology for the Confession, 
another standard of the Lutherans, says, "Moreover, 
we here again wish to testify, that we will willingly 
preserve the ecclesiastical and canonical polity, if the 
bishops will only cease from persecuting our churches. 
This our wish will excuse us both in the presence of 
God and of all nations to all posterity, so that it may 
not be imputed to us that the authority of Bishops is 
overthrown, when men shall read and hear that we, 
deprecating the unjust cruelty of the bishops, could 
obtain no relief." In like manner the articles of Smal- 
cald, drawn up by Luther, approved of the authority of 
bishops. And such were the expressed sentiments of 
Melancthon. Writing to John Thurzo, Bishop of Bres- 
law, in Silesia, he says, " You alone, so far as I know, 
have exhibited in Germany a complete pattern of a 



FOR EPISCOPACY, ETC. 69 

Bishop, in authority, letters and piety. Wherefore if 
the republic had ten fellow-counsellors like you I should 
not doubt that Christ would be born anew." Caraccioli, 
the Bishop of Troyes, was unanimously acknowledged 
and received by the elders of the French Reformed 
Church "as a true Bishop;" "and his authority and 
piety," says Peter Martyr, "did great service to the 
Church of Christ; praised be God, who takes these 
methods to govern and advance the kingdom of his 
Son." This Bishop with two others became Protest- 
ants, and acted for some time afterwards as bishops, 
but were in the end compelled, by the secular power, to 
betake themselves to private stations. Their reception 
by the Reformed bodies, shows that the early members 
of these bodies would have been pleased to have had 
churches organized under bishops. Indeed at one time 
some of the chief men among the French Protestants 
solicited Cardinal Richelieu to place episcopacy among 
them by his authority, but he refused and told them, 
" If you had that order you would look too like a 
Church." The language of Calvin on one occasion is 
very strong, " Give us such an hierarchy," says he, " in 
which bishops preside, who are subject to Christ, and 
Him alone as their only Head, and then I will own no 
curse too bad for him that shall not pay the utmost 
respect and obedience to such an hierarchy as that." 

So that it appears that the Reformers who rejected 
episcopacy, did not do it because they denied episcopacy 
to be an apostolical institution. On the contrary they 
both showed and expressed a desire to retain it in their 
churches, and in fact most if not all of the continental 
reformed bodies of Europe, are arranged on the epis- 

7 



70 HISTORICAL ARGUMENT 

copal model ; that is, they have presidents or superin- 
tendents, where they do not have the apostolical suc- 
cession, and in the Church of Sweden they have this 
succession. 

This position of the Reformers has been mentioned 
in order that we may observe the growth of opinion, 
and the light, which following these Reformers in their 
institutions without episcopacy has given their succes- 
sors upon the history of the Primitive Church. The 
Reformers considered episcopacy a primitive and apos- 
tolic ordinance, but their descendants having lived under 
a different form of government for three hundred years, 
have at length discovered that this new form of govern- 
ment was really the primitive one, and that episcopacy 
was an encroachment and a usurpation upon that. And 
so in the time of Christ, the Samaritans, whose temple 
had been built on Mount Gerizim a little more than 
three hundred years, had learned to say, "Our fathers 
worshipped in this mountain ; and ye say, that in Jeru- 
salem is the place where men ought to worship." 

We are now to try the question of antiquity on a 
subject, upon which, for fifteen hundred years from the 
Apostles' times, the voice of the Church is unanimous. 
And the main stress of the argument lies upon the deter- 
mination of the form of Church government in the 
Apostles' times, and the times immediately succeeding; 
for from the close of the second century downwards the 
most distinguished anti-episcopal writers admit that epis- 
copacy was fully established. We do not admit that 
there is any ground of doubt in times preceding, but 
those times are the ones upon which the opponents of 
episcopacy fasten to maintain their opinion. The times 



FOR EPISCOPACY, ETC. 71 

of the Apostles we have already reviewed, and shown 
that the Apostles established episcopal government in 
the Church, and that one of the last views which Reve- 
lation gives us is that of episcopacy flourishing in all its 
vigor in the seven churches of Asia. And then one of 
the first views which meets our eye in the regions of 
Church history is that of this form of government esta- 
blished in the Church in all parts of the world, under 
Bishops, whom the Apostles themselves had appointed. 

The principal witness in these times is Ignatius, who, 
about the year 70 of our Lord, succeeded Evodius as 
Bishop of Antioch in Syria, the place where the disci- 
ples were first called Christians ; who was ordained by 
the Apostles, and suffered martyrdom in Rome in the 
reign of the same emperor in whose reign St. John died, 
and a few years after the death of that Apostle. The 
testimony of Ignatius then is sufficiently early, as it 
actually mounts into apostolic times, and comes from 
one who had seen and conversed with the Apostles. 

There are seven letters from him to different churches, 
and to his friend Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna. These 
letters have been translated and published in a form in 
which all can read them, and they need only be read for 
complete satisfaction as to the government of the Church 
in its first and purest age, as it was when it came fresh 
from the hands of the Apostles. 

Ignatius is full of the three orders in the ministry, 
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, in those early churches, 
and of the proper subordination which the two lower 
ranks in the ministry ought to show to the highest, and 
of the regard in which all the orders should be held in 
the Church. For example, in his letter to the Church 



72 HISTORICAL ARCUMENT 

of Magnesia, he says, "Forasmuch therefore, as I have, 
in the persons before-mentioned, seen all of you in faith 
and charity, I exhort you that you study to do all things 
in a divine concord, your Bishop presiding in the place 
of God, your Presbyters in the place of the council of 
the Apostles, and your Deacons, most dear to me, being 
entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ, who, before 
all ages was with the Father, and appeared in the end."* 
The testimony of Ignatius is important, and it is con- 
clusive. He had been, in conjunction with Polycarp, a 
disciple of St. John, as we learn from the acts of his 
martyrdom, written by those who accompanied him from 
Antioch to Rome, when by order of the emperor Trajan 
he was taken there to be exposed to wild beasts. All the 
letters of Ignatius which are preserved to us, were writ- 
ten in that journey, and in all the churches to which they 
were written, except that of Rome, it appears from the 
letters themselves that there were three orders of minis- 
ters established, of which the lower were subject and 
subordinate to the higher, and that in each of them there 
was but one bishop, while there were several presbyters 
and deacons. In the Church of Rome Ignatius was not 
personally acquainted, and he merely wrote .to them to 
entreat them not to take any measures to deprive him of 
the crown of martyrdom which he was journeying to 
Rome to obtain. He had no occasion therefore to allude 
to the government of the Church of Rome ; for it is to 
be noticed that clear as the epistles of Ignatius are upon 
the form of church government in the early Church, the 
subject is introduced incidentally, in order to enforce 

* Ignat. ad Magnes, s. 6 ; see also ad Trail, s. 2, 3 ; ad Smyrna 
s. 8 ; ad Magnes : s. 3, 4 ; ad. Ephes. s. 3, 4. 



F0I1 EPISCOPACY, ETC. 73 

the exhortations, which he makes to the churches to 
avoid heresy and schism by adherence to the govern- 
ment which Christ had appointed in his Church. 

Ignatius was personally acquainted with the condition 
of the churches to whom he makes these exhortations, 
and undoubtedly suits them to the circumstances of these 
churches. He points at some prevailing errors in regard 
to the person of Christ, and at some symptoms of in- 
subordination which had manifested themselves, and he 
recalls those to whom he writes from these schisms and 
heresies to the provisions which Christ had made for 
keeping them in the unity of the church and sound doc- 
trine. 

Now, this natural introduction of the subject is free 
from all suspicion. It shows that the form of govern- 
ment to which Ignatius exhorts all the churches to whom 
he writes to adhere, was firmly established, and regard- 
ed as of divine origin in the Church. 

And so he speaks of it, and exhorts the people to ad- 
here to the Bishop and other ministers as to the ordi- 
nance of God: "It is good," he says, " to have due 
regard both to God and to the bishop. He that honors 
the bishop shall be honored of God. He that doeth any 
thing without the bishop's knowledge ministers to the 
devil."* " See that ye all follow your bishop, as Jesus 
Christ (followed) the Father, and the Presbytery as the 
Apostles, and reverence the deacons as the command of 
God. Let no one do any thing which belongs to the 
Church separately from the bishop. . . . Wheresoever 
the bishop shall appear, there let the people also be, as 
where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."! 

* Ep. ad Smyrn. s. 9. \ Ep. ad Smyrn. s. 8. 

•7* 



74 HISTORICAL ARGUMENT 

" In like manner let all reverence the deacons as the 
commandment of Jesus Christ ; the bishop as the Son 
of the Father ; and the Presbyters as the council of God, 
and as the assembly of the Apostles. Without these 
there is no church."* These quotations sufficiently 
show the sentiments of Ignatius, and it seems that the 
idea of the divine right of episcopacy was no strange 
one to men that conversed with the Apostles. 

The testimony of Ignatius embraces a vast portion of 
the Church, extending from his own diocese of Antioch 
in Syria, through Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Epirus 
to Rome. In his journey to Rome he was received by 
the churches, and honored in Asia by the attendance of 
their bishops, and presbyters, and deacons, and in all 
probability these officers of the churches attended him 
in every part of his journey where churches were 
planted. At all events, with the Church from Antioch 
to Rome, Ignatius, who believed that bishops, presby- 
ters, and deacons were necessary to the existence of a 
Church, could hold communion, and at Rome he was 
warmly received by the brethren as a bishop of Syria, 
so that the episcopal form of government, we can per- 
ceive from the history of Ignatius alone, to have been 
spread in the whole Church as an essential part of its 
constitution. 

The testimony of Ignatius is peculiarly valuable, be- 
cause at that time the Church was persecuted by the 
civil power, and there was no temptation to her officers 
to pretend to powers which were not granted her by her 
divine Head. The bishops were martyrs, and held the 
posts of danger. In the eloquent words of bishop Tay- 

* Ep. ad Trail, s. 3. 



FOR EPISCOPACY, ETC. 75 

lor, " Who will imagine that bishops should at the first, 
in the calenture of their infant devotion, in the new 
spring of Christianity, in the times of persecution, in 
all the public disadvantages of state and fortune, where 
they anchored only upon the shore of a holy conscience, 
that then they should have thoughts ambitious, encroach- 
ing, of usurpation and advantages, of purpose to divest 
their brethren of an authority entrusted them by Christ; 
and then, too, where all the advantage of their honor 
did only set them upon a hill, to feel a stronger blast of 
persecution, and was not, as since it hath been, attested 
with secular assistance, and fair arguments of honor, 
but was only in a mere spiritual estimate, and ten thou- 
sand real disadvantages. This will not be supposed 
either of wise or holy men, .... and if the church of 
martyrs, and the church of saints, and doctors, and con- 
fessors now regnant in heaven, be fair precedents for 
practices of Christianity, we build upon a rock, though 
we had digged no deeper than this foundation of Catho- 
lic practice."* 

So that we have evidence of the same kind for episco- 
pacy which there is for any and every other part of 
Christianity. It is a strong proof of the truth of Chris- 
tianity, that men, with no temporal advantages to gain, 
who could not but have known its pretences to be false, 
if they really were, were willing to suffer and die in 
attestation of its truth. And so those men who had con- 
versed with the Apostles, must have known that they 
were usurping power as bishops, if they really were 
guilty of such usurpation ; and yet these men were will- 
ing to hold an office which they claimed openly to be 

* Episcopacy Asserted, sec. 37. 



76 HISTORICAL ARGUMENT 

of divine authority, when that office placed them in the 
van of a Christendom beset by relentless persecution, 
where no temporal ends were to be gained, where bish- 
ops, as such, were the very ones selected for martyr- 
dom, and where the consciousness of being usurpers, 
and usurpers, too, who sought to consecrate their usurp- 
ation by the sanction of divine authority must have un- 
nerved them, and deprived them of all motives which 
could lead them thus willingly to suffer and die. Men, 
who did not shrink from the maintenance of their claims 
under such circumstances, must have been sincere in 
maintaining them, and as they were men who had seen 
the Apostles, they could not but know the foundation of 
claims which they derived from the Apostles. We have 
therefore the same kind of evidence for episcopacy as 
for any other part of Christianity. 

Ignatius asserts as high a power to bishops as any 
advocate of episcopacy could wish, but it is all spiritual 
power, and in the circumstances of the Church in that 
age, could only have been exercised by men who knew 
that it had been committed to them by divine authority. 
Ignatius is not the only bishop whom we know, from 
ancient history, to have been ordained by the Apostles. 
Thus we learn, from the testimony of many early 
writers in the Church, that St. Mark, the evangelist, 
was the first bishop of the church of Alexandria. In 
like manner we have the testimony of many writers, 
from the second to the fifth centuries, that St. James the 
Just, the brother of the Saviour, was made the bishop 
of Jerusalem. " He was ordained by the Apostles," 
says St. Jerome, " immediately after our Lord's cruci- 
fixion." And we have also adduced clear Scriptural 



FOR EPISCOPACY, ETC. 77 

evidence for this pre-eminence of James in Jerusalem. 
So that here, as in other cases, Scripture and ecclesias- 
tical history unite to prove the divine origin of the office 
of bishop. And it is to be remarked that the authors, 
who give this testimony to the elevation of James, 
wrote in ages when episcopacy, however it originated, 
was clearly established in the Church, and that their 
testimony has reference to the office of James in the 
sense in which the office of bishop is now understood. 
We have also early evidence that the Apostles ordain- 
ed three successive bishops in the Church of Rome. 
Dionysius the Areopagite, who is mentioned in the Acts 
of the Apostles, was made first bishop of Athens ; for 
this we have the express testimony of a very ancient 
writer of the second century, who was himself bishop 
of Corinth. The ancient authors of the Church also 
corroborate the evidence from Scripture, that Timothy 
and Titus were respectively the bishops of Ephesus and 
Crete. About the year 158, Hegesippus came from the 
East to Rome, and he says that he had conversed with 
many bishops on his journey, and that he received the 
same doctrine from them all. He mentions Primus, 
bishop of Corinth, with whom he spent many days, and 
when he reached Rome, he found Anicetus bishop there. 
He relates that after the martyrdom of James the Just, 
Simon the son of Cleopas, a relation of our Lord, was 
appointed bishop of Jerusalem. Eusebius gives exact 
and authentic catalogues of the bishops in the principal 
cities of the Roman empire, from the apostles' time to 
his own. He mentions, from early and authentic re- 
cords, the existence of bishops, from the time of the 
apostles in all parts of the world, from Osroene in the 



78 HISTORICAL ARGUMENTS 

East, to Gaul in the West, from Pontus in the Nortli to 
Egypt in the South ; so that with the evidence we have 
of the successions of bishops from the Apostles, to dis- 
believe it would be to discredit all history. 

The successions of bishops were well preserved in 
the Primitive Church, and the bishops of those early 
ages knew that they were treading in the footsteps and 
occupying the power of their predecessors in office. 
Irenaeus in the second century could say, without doubt, 
" We can reckon those who were appointed bishops in 
the churches by the Apostles, and their successors, even 
unto us, who have taught no such thing, neither have 
known any thing like the ravings of these (heretics.) * 
***** p or th ev wished those to be very per- 
fect and unblameable in all things, whom they left as 
their successors delivering to them their own place of 
authority "* So that it seems as clear as testimony 
can make it, that the government of the Church in the 
Apostles age and as the Apostles left it was episcopal. 

The only pretence to the contrary can arise from the 
supposition that the bishops of those days were not the 
same officers with those whom we call bishops. But 
we have seen in the former chapter that the Apostles or 
Bishops of Scripture fully correspond to the bishops of 
the Church in the present day. And we have just 
adduced the testimony of Irenaeus that the Apostles 
committed to their successors in office "their own 
place of authority " Tertullian, Cyprian, Firmilian, 
Clarus a Muscula in the synod of Carthage in the time 
of Cyprian, and Jerome, all affirm the bishops to be suc- 
cessors of the Apostles. And indeed no one would 
* Irenaeus contra Haeres : Lib. III. cap. III. 



FOR EPISCOPACY, ETC. 79 

claim a higher jurisdiction over clergy and people, than 
we have seen in the present chapter to have been given 
to bishops in the time of Ignatius, who had conversed 
with Apostles and was appointed bishop by them. He 
asserts Bishops, Priests, and Deacons to be all orders of 
the sacred ministry. He says of the lowest order, " for 
they are not deacons of meats and drinks, but ministers 
of the Church of God,* and again " the deacons most 
dear to me, being entrusted with the ministry of Jesus 
Christ."\ He speaks of all the orders together as ser- 
vants of the altar ) " He that is within the altar is pure, 
but he that is without, that is, that does any thing with- 
out the Bishop and Presbyters and Deacons is not pure 
in his conscience. "J And yet all ministerial authority 
he represents as coming from the Bishop. " Let no 
man do any thing which concerns the Church without 
the Bishop. Let that eucharist be accounted valid, 
which is ordered by the bishop, or one whom he ap- 
points. ***** It is not lawful either to bap- 
tize or celebrate the eucharist without the bishop ; but 
that which he allows is well pleasing to God."§ Here 
then the power of ordaining or commissioning to the 
work of the ministry is attributed exclusively to the 
bishop. Surely Ignatius, who insists so much upon 
adherence to the ministry of Christ's appointment, did 
not mean to say that laymen might receive authority 
from the bishop to celebrate the sacraments of Christ. 
According to him, to be in fellowship with the threefold 
ministry is to be within the altar, and he says expressly, 
" Let no man be deceived : unless one is within tht 

* Epis: ad Trail. f Ad Magnes. s. 6. * Ad Trail. 7. 
§ Ad Smyrna, s. 8. 



80 HISTORICAL ARGUMENT 

altar, he is deprived of the bread of God";* that is, 
according to the explanation of Ignatius already given, 
unless one is in communion with an episcopally ordained 
ministry, he is deprived of the bread of God. The 
bishops of Ignatius were therefore most clearly essen- 
tially the same officers, whom we now call bishops. In 
his letter to Polycarp, he attributes to him the regulation 
of all things in his Church, just as we have seen that 
the angels of the churches were held responsible for the 
condition of the churches over which they presided. 

Indeed the instance of Polycarp, who was appointed 
by the Apostles, Bishop of the Church of Smyrna, and 
who was a disciple of St. John, is a peculiarly valuable 
one for our present subject. Irenaeus, who was ap- 
pointed Bishop of Lyons, in the year 177, had in his 
youth seen Polycarp, and he tells us that he retained a 
vivid recollection of the venerable old Bishop. «« I could 
describe," says he, " the very place in which the blessed 
Polycarp sat and taught ; his going out and coming in ; 
the whole tenor of his life, and his personal appearance ; 
the discourses in fine which he made to the people, and 
his familiar intercourse with John and others, who had 
seen the Lord, as he detailed it, and in what manner he 
commemorated their sayings, and in what manner he 
related the things which he had heard from them con- 
cerning the Lord, his miracles and his doctrine, which 
Polycarp had received from those who themselves had 
seen the Word of Life, all of which were agreeable to 
the Scriptures."! Now w r e cannot suppose that such 
men would be guilty of an usurpation, such, as in these 
days, it is pretended episcopal power was in the Church ; 
* Ad Ephes. 5. f Epis. ad Florinum. 



FOR EPISCOPACY, ETC. 81 

and yet Irenaeus, who so well remembered Polycarp, 
testifies that he was appointed Bishop of Smyrna by the 
Apostles. Now in the days of Irenaeus episcopal power 
was undeniably established in the Church, however it 
originated. Irenaeus, we have already seen, attributes to 
the successors of the Apostles the authority of Apostles, 
which the first Apostles transmitted to them. He used 
the word bishop in the sense in which we do, and in 
that sense he says that Polycarp was appointed Bishop 
of Smyrna by the Apostles ; so that unless we believe 
Polycarp, the disciple of St. John, to have been an 
usurper, we must believe episcopacy to have been an 
apostolical institution. Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, 
a cotemporary of Irenaeus, also mentions Polycarp as 
Bishop of Smyrna and Martyr, and he likewise men- 
tions Sagaris, another martyr, as former Bishop of Lao- 
dicea, another of the seven churches of Asia. He 
speaks of great numbers of bishops who were assem- 
bled with him in council. In the case of Polycarp, who 
was ordained Bishop of Smyrna by the Apostles, the 
offices of Bishop of Smyrna, and Angel of the Church 
of Smyrna are identified. And in like manner, we have 
authentic mention of bishops being in the churches of 
Laodicea and Sardis not long after the time of St. John.* 
The episcopacy of Scripture and succeeding ages, is 
likewise identified, as we have seen, in the case of Timo- 
thy, who is said by numerous authors to have been 
ordained Bishop of Ephesus by St. Paul; in that of 
Titus, whom we learn from like authority to have been 
Bishop of Crete, and in that of James, the Apostle, the 
brother of the Lord, as he is called in Scripture, the 

* Eusebius. Lib. 5, cap. 24, et Lib. 4. cap. 26. 
8 



82 HISTORICAL ARGUMENT 

Bishop of Jerusalem, as he is called by the early writers 
of the Church. 

So that we have the clearest evidence that episcopacy 
was established in the Church by the Apostles, — from 
the epistles of Ignatius, who with Polycarp was the 
disciple of St. John ; from the instance of Polycarp 
himself, whom we have seen to have been ordained 
Bishop of Smyrna by the Apostles ; and from well 
authenticated early accounts of the establishment of 
Bishops by the Apostles in many other churches, in 
parts of the world most distant from each other. We 
have traced the origin of episcopacy into the times when 
the Scriptures were written, and to men who conversed 
with the Apostles, and we have seen the accounts of 
history confirmed by Scripture. 

We have also the direct testimony of Ignatius, an 
apostolical man, for the divine origin of that episcopal 
government, upon which he so much insists. And, 
indeed, that episcopacy was a divine institution, and thr.t 
bishops were successors of the Apostles, was the uni- 
versal belief of the early Church. Origen says, "If 
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is subject to Joseph and 
Mary, shall not I be subject to the Bishop, who is of 
God ordained to be my Father ? Shall not I be subject 
to the Presbyter, who by the Lord's vouchsafement is 
set over me."* Cyprian says, " Thence through the 
changes of times and successions, the ordination of 
bishops and the order of the Church descends, so that 
the Church may be established upon the bishops, and 
every act of the Church governed by the same prelates. 
Since this therefore is established by the divine law, I 

* Orig. Horn. 20, in Luc. Op. III. 956 ; quoted by Palmer. 



FOR EPISCOPACY, ETC. 



83 



wonder that some have wished so to write to me with 
audacious temerity, that they indited their letters in the 
name of the Church."* Athanasius writing to Dracon- 
tius, who had declined a bishopric, says, " If the gov- 
ernment of the churches do not please you, and you 
think the office of a bishop has no reward, you make 
yourself a despiser of the Saviour, who did institute 
IT# * * * * * f or w hat things the Lord did 
institute by his apostles, remain both honourable and 
firm." 

But if we had not all this direct evidence, if we 
merely knew the fact that this form of government was 
established in the age immediately after that of the 
Apostles in all parts of the Church, or in any considera- 
ble portion of it, we could not believe that its origin was 
not apostolical ; that the Apostles established Presby- 
terianism, and that immediately after their death, even 
before the death of the last of them, as if by spiritual 
magic, a totally different system should emerge, even 
episcopacy in all its vigor ; for be it remembered that in 
no age has the spiritual power of bishops been higher 
than it seems to have been in the days of Ignatius. We 
cannot believe that men would be guilty of such usurpa- 
tions of power, when the mitre of a Bishop was most 
usually exchanged for the crown of a martyr. We 
cannot believe that such usurpers would be the disciples 
of the Apostles. We cannot believe that such a change 
could be brought about in the universal Church in the 
short space of a moment, as it must have been if it was 
ever made, — and that too, without noise or opposition, 
or without an intimation of it having escaped to later 
* Cyp. Lapsis. Ep. 27, al. 33. 



84 HISTORICAL ARGUMENT 

times. Was the whole Church at once so forgetful of 
the institutions of the Apostles ? and that while those 
who had been their disciples lived ? Were there no 
valiant defenders of truth and right ? no Presbyters to 
resist the usurpations of the anti-apostolical bishops, 
who were themselves no more than presbyters ? — and 
all this too, in an age when men preferred martyrdom 
to a rejection of Christ, and preferred the institutions of 
Christ and his Apostles to all things else. If they could 
thus change the ordinances of Christ, without suffering 
a particle of evidence of the change to escape to later 
ages and without opposition, why may they not have 
put scriptures of their own in place of Christ's revela- 
tion, and what certainty is there in our religion from 
outward testimony ? In the words therefore of a pow- 
erful reasoner, with some modification, we come to our 
conclusion : "When I shall see therefore all the fables 
in the Metamorphosis acted, and prove true stories; 
when I shall see all the democracies and aristocracies in 
the world lie down and sleep, and awake into monarch- 
ies ; then will I begin to believe that presbyterial gov- 
ernment, having continued in the Church during the 
Apostles' times, should presently after (against the 
Apostles' doctrine and the will of Christ,) be wheeled 
about like a scene in a mask, and transformed into epis- 
copacy. In the mean time, while these things remain 
thus incredible, and in human reason impossible, I hope 
I shall have leave to conclude thus : 

; ' Episcopal government was universally received in 
the Church presently after the Apostles' times. 

" Between the Apostles' times and this presently after, 
there was not time enough for, nor possibility of. so 
?reat an alteration, 



FOR EPISCOPACY, ETC. 85 

" And therefore there was no such alteration as is pre- 
tended, and therefore, Episcopacy, being so ancient and 
Catholic, must be granted also to be Apostolic."* 

We have thus shown that by certain inference from 
the fact that episcopacy was established in the age imme- 
diately after the apostolic, we could arrive at the same 
conclusion which we reached by direct testimony : that 
episcopacy is an apostolical and divine ordinance. 

It is not necessary for us to descend into later ages ; 
for it is admitted that from the latter part of the second 
century downwards, episcopacy was prevalent in all the 
Church till the time of the Reformation, unless the 
Waldenses are an exception. 

But we should be at no loss to prove its divine origin 
from history and Scripture, though we had no records of 
the age immediately succeeding that of the Apostles. 
We select for illustration of this position the age of 
Cyprian, who flourished about a. d. 250 ; and we select 
this age because Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, is sup- 
posed by some who reject episcopacy to have completed 
this grand usurpation and to have carried the power of 
bishops to the highest pitch; though in truth the ideas 
of Cyprian and of Ignatius seem to have been very 
similar on the subject. Cyprian said, that " the Church 
was in the Bishop, and the Bishop in the Church," and 
Ignatius said, " Without these (Bishops, Presbyters, 
and Deacons,) there is no Church." 

Now Cyprian believed that bishops were of divine 
institution ; that they were successors of the Apostles ; 
that the Church was built upon them; and that every 

* Chillinbworth's Apost: Institution or Episcopacy de- 

MOHSTRATF/B. Sec. II. 

8* 



Mil HISTORICAL ARGUMFVI 

action of the Church was to be governed by them. And 
these were the ideas and the practice of his age. And 
we can discover in no previous age of the Church, (we 
are now supposing, be it remembered, that the records 
of the age immediately succeeding that of the Apostles 
had all perished,) we can discover in no age previous to 
that of Cyprian, any evidence of the gradual introduc- 
tion of the ideas of episcopal government, which pre- 
vailed in his age, or any evidence that any different ideas 
ever prevailed in the Church. On the contrary, previous 
writers, such as Tertullian and Irenaeus, hold similar 
language and the same ideas. Changes had been made 
in the government of the Church, and we can discern 
the gradual introduction of them. Arch-Bishoprics had 
been erected, and Cyprian himself was an Arch-Bishop, 
but the essential distinction of three orders in the min- 
istry had not been meddled with or altered, and there is 
no evidence that amid all changes any difference of 
opinion had prevailed concerning the apostolical deriva- 
tion of this distinction. 

Now we say that if episcopal power were an usurpa- 
tion, some evidences of the gradual stealth of this usurpa- 
tion upon the Church would have been recorded. 
Churches would have been organized on varying 
models. There would not have been, as there was, 
just this model among all, whether schismatics or catho- 
lics, and a universal belief of its apostolical origin, with- 
out any evidence that any other belief had ever prevailed, 
and with abundant evidence that this had prevailed in 
the earliest ages of which the written records had been 
preserved. We say that evidence such as this would be 
sufficient, without any records of the age immediately 



FOR EPISCOPACY, ETC. 87 

succeeding the apostolic, to corroborate it ; and this evi- 
dence, joined with that of Scripture, though the link 
now supplied by the writings of Ignatius and Polycarp 
and Clemens Romanus were lost from the chain, would 
be ample proof of the divine origin of the Church-gov- 
ernment under which we live. 

In the first fifteen hundred years of the Church there 
was but one pretence put forth that Presbyters were 
equal to Bishops, and that was in the fourth century. 
iErius, a presbyter of Sebaste, in Phrygia, was disap- 
pointed of his desire to obtain the bishopric, and after- 
wards asserted that a presbyter was equal in orders, 
honor and worth, to a bishop. And he was rejected by 
the Catholic Church as a heretic, this being a principal 
ground, as several reputable writers of the Church 
assert.* 

The Church has always highly valued the apostolic 
succession as the source of ministerial authority, and 
would never permit it to be lost. She has always jeal- 
ously guarded the right of ordination. " In 324, the 
council of all the Egyptian bishops assembled at Alex- 
andria under Hosius, declared null and void the ordina- 
tions performed by Colluthus, a presbyter of Alexan- 
dria, who had separated from his bishop and pretended 
to act as bishop himself. In 340, the Egyptian bishops, 
in their defence of St. Athanasius, alluding to Ischyras 
who pretended to be a priest, said: " Whence then was 
Ischyras a presbyter? Who was his ordainer? Collu- 
thus ? For this only remains. But it is known to all, 
and doubted by no one, that Colluthus died a presbyter, 
that his hands were without authority ; and that all who 

* Epiphanius, Philastrius, Austin. 



88 HISTORICAL ARGUMENT 

were ordained by him in time of the schism, were re- 
duced to the state of laymen, and as such attend the 
Church's assemblies." In the first Council of Seville, 
(a. d. 590,) the ordinations performed by the Bishop of 
Agabre were declared null, beeause an assisting pres- 
byter was accustomed to read the prayer of ordination 
on account of the bishop's blindness, who, however, laid 
his hands on those who were to be ordained."* In 
times of persecution and of heresy, when the episcopal 
succession was in danger, each bishop was authorized to 
consecrate bishops in any part of the world, that the 
succession might be perpetuated. And instances of the 
exercise of this power are on record. So scrupulous 
was the care which the Church took of the ministerial 
succession with which her Lord endowed her. 

We might as well suppose that the whole Christian 
Church would have suffered spurious scriptures to be 
substituted in place of those which the Apostles had 
left the Church, as that she would have allowed the 
apostolical succession of her ministry to fail. How 
impossible would it be to abolish the order of bishops in 
our own Church, or to prevent it from being transmitted 
as a precious divine inheritance to our descendants. But 
this impossibility has existed in every age of the Church. 
The value which the Church has always put upon the 
apostolical succession as a gift of God, has ever been 
and still is a sufficient guarantee of its preservation ; a 
guarantee endorsed by the divine promise that the gates 
of hell should never prevail against it, and by that other 
promise incorporated in the very terms of the apostolic 

* Palmer on the Church : Vol. II., p. 392, 



FOR EPISCOPACY, ETC. 89 

commission, — " lo, I am with you ahvay, even unto the 
end of the world." 

Once establish the fact, that the apostolic succession 
originated from the appointment of the Saviour, and 
such an origination is a sufficient warrant for our confi- 
dence in the reality of its transmission. Dr. Whately 
introduces some of the practices of the middle ages to 
throw suspicion upon the certainty of the succession. 
He says, " We read of bishops consecrated when mere 
children ; of men officiating who barely knew their 
letters — of prelates expelled, and others put into their 
places, by violence ; of illiterate and profligate laymen 
and habitual drunkards, admitted to holy orders ; and in 
short, of the prevalence of every kind of disorder and 
reckless disregard of the decency which the Apostle 
enjoins."* Now all this shows shocking abuse and 
profanation of the holy ordinances of the Church, but 
it does not show, what is necessary to Dr. Whately's 
argument, that these ordinances were dispensed with. 
Improper persons were admitted to the offices of the 
ministry, but still they were consecrated and ordained 
to those offices. Dr. Whately himself says, " We read 
of bishops consecrated when mere children," " of illi- 
terate and profligate laymen admitted to holy orders" 
By the good providence of God, the idea of the necessity 
of consecration and ordination was maintained even in 
these ages of darkness and sin ; and regular and valid 
forms of consecration and ordination were in use, that 
so, notwithstanding the wickedness of man, the ministry 
of God might be perpetuated in its unbroken line of 
succession, till God in his own good time should reform 

* Page 184. 



90 HISTORICAL AROIJMKNT 

his Church and send forth his ministry, endued with a 
spirit of holiness, to its appropriate work. In every age 
of the Church, the perpetuation of the succession has 
been deemed necessary ; and this, together with the 
establishment of the apostolic ministry by our Saviour, 
and his promise to it of perpetuity, are proofs clear and 
convincing of its existence in that Church, to which it 
has descended as a precious inheritance from the fathers 
of olden time. 

The rule which has always existed in the Church, 
that three bishops at least should be concerned in every 
consecration is, moreover, a human demonstration of 
the validity of the orders of every episcopally ordained 
minister. The probabilities of the valid consecration of 
every bishop increase in a rapidly multiplying ratio, as 
we go back, generation by generation, to the first ages 
of the Church. The validity of every bishop's conse- 
cration depends upon that of his consecrators or any one 
of them, and the validity of theirs upon that of their 
consecrators or any one of them. Each bishop must be 
consecrated by at least three bishops. Each of them 
must have been consecrated by three at least, and each 
of them likewise by at least three ; and when we con- 
sider that the rule of the Church, as established by the 
Nicene canon, was that all the bishops of a province 
should meet, when they could, for the consecration of 
every bishop : and that only in cases of urgent neces- 
sity three only were allowed to consecrate, the Metro- 
politan and the rest of the bishops in the province 
sending their consent in writing, the assurance of valid 
transmission of orders is still stronger ; for we cannot 
suppose that all or most of the bishops thus concerned 



FOR EPISCOPACY, ETC. 91 

in transmitting episcopal authority to every bishop were 
not validly and canonically consecrated. So that besides 
the divine warrant for the continuance of the apos- 
tolical succession, we could establish its permanence and 
actual transmission by the force of human demonstration. 
The representation of Dr. Whately on this subject is 
the shallowest sophistry. He says, " The fallacy, 
indeed, by which, according to the above principles, the 
Christian is taught to rest his own personal hopes of 
salvation on the individual claims to "apostolical suc- 
cession" of the particular minister he is placed under, 
is one so gross that few are thoughtless enough to be 
deceived by it in any case where religion is not con- 
cerned ; — where, in short, a man has not been taught to 
make a virtue of uninquiring, unthinking acquiescence. 
For the fallacy consists in confounding together the 
unbroken apostolical succession of a Christian ministry 
generally, and the same succession in an unbroken line, 
of this or that individual minister. The existence of 
such an order of men as Christian ministers, continu- 
ously from the time of the Apostles to this day, is per- 
haps as complete a moral certainty as any historical fact 
can be ; because (independently of the various inciden- 
tal notices by historians, of such a class of persons,) it 
is plain that if, at the present day, or a century ago, or 
ten centuries ago, a number of men had appeared in the 
world professing (as our clergy do now,) to hold a 
recognized office in a Christian Church, to which they 
had been regularly appointed as successors to others, 
whose predecessors in like manner had held the same, 
and so on from the times of the Apostles, — if, I say, 
such a pretence had been put forth by a set of men 



02 HISTORICAL ARGUMENT 

assuming an office which no one had ever heard of 
before, — it is plain, that they would at once have heen 
refuted and exposed. And as this will apply equally to 
each successive generation of Christian ministers, till 
we come up to the time when the institution was con- 
fessedly new, — that is, to the time when Christian min- 
isters were appointed by the Apostles, who professed 
themselves eye-witnesses of the resurrection, — we have 
(as Leslie has remarked*) a standing monument, in the 
Christian ministry, of the fact of that event as having 
been proclaimed immediately after the time when it was 
said to have occurred. This therefore is fairly brought 
forward as an evidence of its truth. 

" But if each man's Christian hope is made to rest on 
his receiving the Christian ordinances at the hands of a 
minister to whom the sacramental virtue that gives effi- 
cacy to those ordinances has been transmitted in un- 
broken succession from hand to hand, every thing must 
depend on that particular minister : and his claim is by 
no means established from our merely establishing the 
uninterrupted existence of such a class of men as 
Christian ministers. "You teach me," a man might 
say, "that my salvation depends on the possession by 
you — the particular pastor under whom I am placed — 
of a certain qualification ; and when I ask for the proof 
that you possess it, you prove to me that it is possessed 
generally by a certain class of persons of whom you 
are one, and probably by a large majority of them !" 
How ridiculous it would be thought, if a man laying 
claim to the throne of some country should attempt to 
establish it without producing and proving his own pedi- 
* Short Method with Deists. 



FOR EPISCOPACY, ETC. 93 

gree, merely by showing that that country had always 
been under hereditary regal government /"* 

Could any passage more suicidal than this have been 
penned ? It was indeed impossible for any ministry to 
have palmed itself off upon the Church as a ministry 
descended from the Apostles, which could not have 
shown the line, the means, and the evidence of such 
descent ; and therefore the ministry always recognized 
in the Church as an apostolical ministry is truly so ; and 
therefore too, a ministry, which in its origin was admit- 
ted to be novel, as was that established by some of the 
reformers, is not apostolical. A ministry originated by 
any Church in any age would not be an evident link 
unanswerably connecting us with . " the time when 
Christian ministers were appointed by the Apostles, 
who professed themselves eye-witnesses of the resur- 
rection" ; and in such a ministry, we have not " a stand- 
ing monument of the fact of that event as having been 
proclaimed immediately after the time when it was said 
to have occurred." Such a ministry as that which Dr. 
Whately advocates might have owed its origin to a later 
age than that of the Apostles, and have acquired a cre- 
dence of its apostolic succession by prescription ; but 
not so with a ministry which shows to us the links of 
its connection with the Apostles. To such a ministry 
only does the argument of Leslie, which Dr. Whately 
seeks to appropriate to a ministry of human appoint- 
ment, apply with unanswerable force. If the first link 
of such a ministry were not in the hands of Christ and 
his Apostles, its claims when first made " would at once 
have been refuted and exposed." 

* Page 187. seq. 
9 



94- HISTORICAL ARGUMENT 

Dr. Whately's representation of the claims of each 
minister of apostolic descent to be recognized as a duly 
authorized minister of Christ, is a most shallow and 
unfair one. The claim, so far as succession is con- 
cerned, is not based on the proof that this ministry "is 
possessed generally by a certain class of persons of 
whom" the particular minister in question is "one," — 
but on his belonging to that line of succession which has 
always been jealously guarded in the Church, and which 
the Saviour has promised to be with till the end of the 
world. It is a claim, the very acknowledgment of 
which, on Dr. Whately's own principle, establishes its 
reality ; for he says, " if such a pretence had been put 
forth by a set of men assuming an office, which no one 
had ever heard of before, " — and we may add, claiming 
a succession which no one had ever heard of before, 
"it is plain, that they would at once have been refuted 
and exposed." The claim is not like that of " a man 
laying claim to the throne of some country," who 
"should attempt to establish it without producing and 
proving his own pedigree, merely by showing that that 
country had always been under hereditary regal gov- 
ernment ;" it is rather like the claim of a man, who 
should show his lineal descent from the roycd family, 
and should claim his throne against a usurper. The 
minister of apostolic descent shows his connexion with 
that line which has always been acknowledged, and in 
which ministerial authority has always been conveyed 
in the Church. And if we might make the impossible 
supposition that in this line there be any undiscoverable 
defect, for this those who adhere to it are not responsi- 
ble ; in adhering to it they obey the command of God, 



FOR EPISCOPACY, ETC. 95 

and cleave to his appointments so far as they can ascer- 
tain them, and therefore naught is diminished to them 
of the fullness of blessing which is attached to the 
" Apostles' fellowship.'' 

On Dr. Whately's principles, it would be difficult for 
any one of us to show his descent from Adam. It would 
be a puzzling matter for any one to trace his descent, 
step by step, to the progenitor of our race. Men are 
generally satisfied of the reality of their descent from 
Adam, on the ground of their being in the line of descent 
which proceeded from him. And on a like ground is 
the apostolic descent of each duly authorized minister 
of Christ established. 

With such evidence therefore from Scripture and 
antiquity for the apostolical succession of the Christian 
ministry, ought not those who reject it to make the sub- 
ject one of serious investigation ? They cannot but 
admit that there may be something in the claims of a 
system, which, by the confession of all sides, has pre- 
vailed in the Church during the greatest period of its 
existence : which, by the confession of all sides, was 
established in the earliest ages and has ever since con- 
tinued; and which is now maintained by nineteen twen- 
tieths of the Christian world ; which from the earliest 
ages (and by earliest ages are meant the times in which 
the opponents of episcopacy confess it to have been 
established,) to the present time, has been held to be a 
divine institution. Can men without serious examina- 
tion remain in connexion with systems, for which they 
cannot produce a single unexceptionable warrant of the 
sacred volume, and against which is recorded, by the 
confession of all, the testimony of the Church for most 



90 HISTORICAL ARGUMENT 

of the ages of its existence, and for which a single clear 
witness of antiquity never has been, and therefore never 
can be adduced. Jerome and Chrysostom, who have 
used expressions that the advocates of Presbyterian gov- 
ernment have deemed favorable to themselves, distinctly 
acknowledge the superiority of bishops in the power of 
ordination, to be a prerogative of their office by apostolic 
appointment, and Chrysostom calls this power, " The 
chief and principal of all ecclesiastical powers, and that 
which chiefly holds the Church together" ;* and St. 
Jerome compares the three orders of the Christian min- 
istry to the three ranks of the Jewish priesthood, and 
says, " The safety of the Church depends upon the 
dignity of the Chief Priest."f Is it not, with the evi- 
dence which exists for episcopacy, possible, to say the 
least, that in rejecting this institution men may be fight- 
ing against God, refusing to receive the ministers Christ 
has sent forth, and bringing themselves within the peril- 
ous limits of his own declaration, " He that despiseth 
you, despiseth me ; and he that despiseth me, despiseth 
him that sent me?"J This is not a question between 
one human system or party and another. It is a ques- 
tion between those, who uphold the divine obligation of 
a system, for which the primitive Christians preferred 
martyrdom to its abandonment, and which even by its 
rejecters is acknowledged to bear traces of its origin in 
the apostolic age itself; it is a question between those 
who uphold the divine obligation of such a system, and 
those, who brand it as an usurpation, and consequently 
accuse the whole Catholic Church of God for centuries, 

*S. Chrysostom. Homi. 16. in 1 Tim. 

f Dial contra. Lucifer. £ Luke x. 16. 



FOR EPISCOPACY, ETC. 97 

of an assumption of power which the Saviour never 
delegated. 

Most distinguished Presbyterian writers, such as 
Blondel and Molinaeus and Campbell, admit, that even in 
the Apostles' times one presbyter had the precedence 
over the rest; and Blondel says, from these presbyters, 
" as heads of the whole clergy, the churches were 
reckoned, and the successions were deduced." Now 
ought there not to be clear proof, before it is asserted, 
that this precedence was not that very distinction of 
order, which was confessedly maintained in the whole 
Church from the close of the second century down- 
wards ? Professor Neander, who adopts the Presbyter- 
ian theory, is obliged to rest it upon conjecture, and con- 
fesses that it has not a historical basis. He says, " It 
was natural that, as the presbyters formed a deliberative 
assembly, it should soon happen that one among them 
obtained the preeminence. This might be so managed 
that a certain succession took place, according to which 
the presidency should change and pass from one to the 
other. It is possible that in many other places such an 
arrangement took place, and yet we find no historical 
trace of any thing in the kind ;"* Gieseler, who in his 
history adopts the Presbyterian theory, yet makes ad- 
missions which fully establish the apostolical institution 
of episcopacy. He says, " The new churches every- 
where formed themselves on the model of the mother- 
church at Jerusalem,"! — and then in a note he adds, 
" Thus James, who always remained in Jerusalem, was 
considered as the head of that Church, (Gal. i. 19 ; ii. 

* Neaiuler's Ch. History, p. 109, Am. ed. 
\ Gieseler. Ecc. His., vol. I., p. 56, sec. 29. 
9* 



98 HISTORICAL ARGUMENT, ETC. 

12 ; Acts xxi. 18,) and hence may be regarded as the 
first bishop in the modern acceptation of the ivord."* 
Put this and that together, the note and the text of 
Gieseler, and does it not make out of his own conces- 
sions an apostolical and a catholic episcopacy ? 

We have then the mere theory of a few persons, who 
find it convenient to maintain presbyterial government 
against the consentient voice of antiquity, and against 
the admissions of the learned rejecters of episcopacy. 
Is it safe on such a theory, such a mere hypothesis, 
bolstered up by arguments whose shallowness has often 
been exposed, to risk so important a matter as our recep- 
tion or our rejection of the ministry which Christ has 
appointed ? And can men under such circumstances 
refuse to institute a serious examination, with prayer to 
God to free them from prejudice, and to give them a 
right understanding in all things. That all who name 
themselves by the name of Christ may do this, and be 
led to see and to embrace the Truth, is our fervent 
prayer. 

* Note ii. p. 58. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 

Among the things excluded by the Apostles from the 
Christian religion, according to Dr. Whately, is a Priest- 
hood as always maintained among men of all religions, 
whether Jewish or Pagan, before the appearance of 
Christ. "The Apostles preached, for the first time — 
the first both to Jew and Gentile — a religion quite oppo- 
site in all these respects to all that had ever been heard 
of before : — a religion without any sacrifice but that 
offered up by its founder in his own person ; — without 
any sacrificing priest (Hiereus) except Him, the great 
and true High Priest, and consequently with no priest 
(in that sense) on earth ; except so far as every one of 
the worshippers was required to present himself as a 
J living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God.' "* If all that 
Dr. Whately means to assert in this passage be that 
there are no priests upon earth, under the Christian dis- 
pensation, to offer bloody sacrifices like those of the 
Jews, no Christian would deny his assertion ; but if he 
mean to say that there be not, under the gospel, as true 
and proper an earthly priesthood as that of the Jews, 
his assertion is one that we hope to disprove. And this 
is the meaning of his assertion, for he makes as an 

* Page 98. 



100 THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 

exception to it the priesthood of each individual Chris- 
tian, and consequently must mean to say, that besides 
this priesthood, common to all Christians, there is uo 
priesthood in the Christian Church specially commis- 
sioned to present to God offerings or sacrifices of any 
description. He expressly denies that men can have 
"power to forgive sins as against God." " So, also, 
we cannot suppose they would even suspect that they, 
or any mortal man, can have " power to forgive sins," 
as against God; — that a man could be authorized 
either to absolve the impenitent, or to shut out from 
divine mercy the penitent; or again, to read the heart, 
so as to distinguish between the two, without any ex- 
press inspiration in each particular case. And this 
express inspiration in particular cases, whatever may 
have been their original expectations, they must soon 
have learned they were not to look for."* 

What a confounding is there here of things, which 
differ!; as if the ministerial power to forgive sins were 
equivalent to a power " of absolving the impenitent, or 
shutting out from divine mercy the penitent," — or to a 
power of reading the heart. Certainly this power of 
forgiving sins is not an impossibility. It is a power 
which has been possessed and exercised by man. Our 
Saviour possessed it in his human nature. Matt. ix. 6: 
44 But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath 
power on earth to forgive sins"; and again verse 8: 
" But when the multitudes saw it, they glorified God, 
which had given such power unto men" And this 
power, which our Saviour possessed as a man, he com- 
municated to his Apostles. John xx. 23 : " Whosesoever 

* Pase 67. 



THE PIUESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 101 

sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them ; and whose- 
soever sins ye retain, they are retained." 

Indeed Dr. Whately, after the denial which we have 
quoted, himself admits that there is a sense in which 
man may forgive sins as against God. " But still, the 
gospel or good-tidings which they were authorized and 
enjoined to proclaim, being most especially tidings of 
" remission of sins" to all who should accept the invita- 
tion made to them by the preachers of the gospel, they 
might properly be said to " remit" or " retain" accord- 
ing as they admitted to baptism the attentive and pro- 
fessedly-penitent and believing hearers, and left out of 
the number of the subjects of Christ's kingdom those 
who neglected or opposed Him. " Repent and be bap- 
tized every one of you for the remission of sins" is 
accordingly the kind of language in which they invite 
their hearers every where to join the body of their mas- 
ter's people ; and yet it is certain the remission of sins 
was conditional only and dependent on a condition of 
which they — the Apostles themselves — had no infallible 
knowledge ; the condition being, the real sincerity of 
that penitence and faith which the converts appeared and 
professed to have. But although this is the only sense 
in which the Apostles, or of course any of their succes- 
sors in the Christian ministry, can be empowered to 
" forgive sins" as against God;"*— here then is an 
express admission of what just before there had been as 
express a denial. 

But leaving Dr. Whately and his inconsistencies, it is 
our purpose to give a brief view of the subject of the 
Christian Priesthood, and show both from Scripture and 

* Page 68. 



102 THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 

Christian antiquity, as well as in the view of our own 
Church, that there is and always has been an earthly 
priesthood in the Christian Church, as there was in the 
Jewish. 

And this we would argue in the first place from the 
fact, that the Christian Church is not a new and distinct 
Church from that which existed among the Jews, but 
the same Church, with larger privileges and richer pro- 
mises. The Christian Church commemorates the first 
coming of the Saviour, as the Jewish Church typified 
it. The Christian Church possesses the realities which 
correspond to the shadows of the old law. It has the 
" very image" of the things, of which the law was a 
shadow. Christian sacraments are higher in their spi- 
ritual efficacy than Jewish sacrifices. In the second 
chapter of the Colossians, the Apostle opposes to the 
emptiness of legal rites, the fullness and spiritual power 
of Christian baptism. Now surely the authorized min- 
isters of these sacraments are, in a more glorious sense, 
the priests of God, than the administrators of legal 
types and shadows. Since the enlargement of the pri- 
vileges of the Church under the Christian dispensation, 
its ministry occupies a more exalted position than ever 
it did before. This is the very reasoning of the Apostle : 
" But if the ministration of death, written and engraven 
in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel 
could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the 
glory of his countenance ; which glory was to be done 
away ; How shall not the ministration of the Spirit be 
rather glorious ?"* 

By the revelation of the gospel, the priesthood of the 
* 2 Cor. iii. 7, 8. 



THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 1*>8 

Church has not been abolished. It has been transferred 
to a new line, and appointed to higher and more spirit- 
ual offices. But surely the ministry, which dispenses 
the word and celebrates the sacraments of the gospel, 
intervenes as much between God and man as did the 
priesthood of the Jews, and it is undeniably the instru. 
ment of conveying to men blessings far superior to 
those, which were dispensed by the priesthood under 
the law. On this subject the language of Bishop Beve- 
ridge is striking: " But the sacrifice that is most proper 
and peculiar to the gospel is the sacrament of our Lord's 
supper, instituted by the Lord himself to succeed all the 
bloody sacrifices in the Mosaic law. For though we 
cannot say, as some assuredly do, that this is such a 
sacrifice whereby Christ is again offered up to God both 
for the living and the dead; yet it may as properly be 
called a sacrifice as any that was ever offered, except that 
which was offered by Christ himself; for His, indeed, 
was the only true expiatory sacrifice that was ever 
offered. Those under the law were only types of his, 
and were called sacrifices only upon that account, be- 
cause they typified and represented that which he was 
to offer for the sins of the world ; and therefore the 
sacrament of Christ's body and blood may as well be 
called by that name as they were. They were typical, 
and this is a commemorative sacrifice."* And there- 
fore they who consecrate this sacrament are as properly 
priests as those who offered the Jewish sacrifices. And 
in this sense Hooker allows the propriety of calling the 
gospel ministry a priesthood, although he prefers the 
term presbyter to priest: "Seeing then that sacrifice is 
" "Bp. Beveridge. Sermons on (he Priesthood. Sermon VIII. 



104 tiik priesthood or the chikch. 

now no part of the Church-ministry, how should the 
name priesthood be thereunto rightly applied? Surely 
even as St. Paul applieth the name of flesh unto that 
very substance of fishes, which hath a proportionable 
correspondence to flesh, although it be in nature another 
thing. Wherefore, when philosophers will speak warily, 
they make a difference between flesh in one sort of liv- 
ing creatures, and that other substance in the rest which 
hath but a kind of analogy to flesh ; the Apostle contra- 
riwise, having matter of greater importance whereof to 
speak, nameth indifferently both flesh. The fathers of 
the Church of Christ, with like security of speech, call 
usually the ministry of the gospel priesthood, in regard 
of that which the gospel hath proportionable to ancient 
sacrifices : namely, the communion of the blessed body 
and blood of Christ, although it hath properly now no 
sacrifice."* That is, as appears from the context, no 
sacrifice like the "ancient sacrifices." Hooker here 
fully admits and defends the catholic use and sense of 
the term priesthood. 

The Church of God under the Jews was called a 
nation of priests, and in like manner in the new testa- 
ment, the Christian Church is called a royal priesthood. 
Now as the priesthood of the Jewish people did not 
exclude the peculiar office among them of the chosen 
priests of the Most High, so by parity of reasoning, the 
ministry of the Christian Church or priesthood must 
itself be a priesthood. Those persons must indeed have 
most extravagant ideas of the Jewish priesthood, and of 
the efficacy of Jewish sacrifices, who deny that the 
administrators of the word and spiritual ordinances of 
* Ecc. Polity. Book 5, ch. 78. 



THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 105 

the gospel are priests of God in a sense at least as true 
and high as were his priests among the Jews. The 
Christian ministry is in fact a continuation of the priest- 
hood of the law modified to suit the more comprehen- 
sive privileges and objects of the Christian dispensation. 
And hence we may see the futility of the argument which 
likens the Christian ministry to the ministry of the syna- 
gogue among the Jews, rather than to that of the temple. 
Surely the Christian ministry, which commemorates the 
mediation of Christ, is the lineal descendant of the priest- 
hood which typified it, and therefore analogies to illus- 
trate the Christian ministry might be expected to be 
found rather in the Jewish temple than in the synagogue. 
The analogy from the synagogue however, is the one 
which Dr. Whately, in common with the advocates of 
Presbyterian government, prefers. But this by the way. 
It is objected that the term priest, (Legeve) is not in the 
New Testament applied to the Christian ministry. And 
this objection weighs with many against the high appel- 
lations, "Ambassadors for Christ," "Stewards of the 
mysteries of God," and others like them, such as are 
not applied to the Jewish priesthood, with which the 
New Testament abounds. But the objection itself is 
not valid. St. Paul does expressly call himself a priest 
in the 16th verse of the 15th chapter of his epistle to 
the Romans: "Nevertheless brethren," he says, "I 
have written the more boldly unto you in some sort, as 
putting you in mind, because of the grace that is given 
to me of God. That I should be the minister of Jesus 
Christ to the Gentiles, ministering in the capacity of 
priest (is^ov^yowtoi) the gospel of God, that the offering 
up (rj rt£off$>o£a) of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being 

10 



106 THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 

sanctified by the Holy Ghost."* Here then the Apostle 
expressly designates his ministration of the gospel as a 
priestly office, and that there may be no mistake as to 
his meaning, he uses a sacrificia 1 term, " the offering 
up" of the Gentiles, to describe the effect of his office. 
As a priest, he had made to God a sacrificial offering of 
the Gentiles whom he had converted ; he had been the 
instrument of God for conveying to them that gospel, 
whereby from God they had obtained remission of sins 
and all other benefits of the Saviour's passion ; and by 
his ministerial or priestly intervention therefore, blessed 
by the Spirit of God and accepted by God, they had 
obtained remission of sins. He had acted for men with 
God, and he had been the authorized instrument of ren- 
dering them acceptable to God ; and what more could 
the Jewish priests with their bloody sacrifices accom- 
plish ? It is a great mistake to suppose that the offering 
of bloody sacrifices is the essence of the priestly office, 
for then Melchizedek, who offered bread and wine, 
would be no priest. The Apostle, in the passage in 
which he calls himself a priest, cannot be understood as 
speaking figuratively ; — for he is giving a reason for the 
boldness of speech which he had been using, — and that 
reason was, the office that he held, the grace that was 
given him of God that he should be the minister of 
Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, administering as a priest 
the gospel of God. Since his office was mentioned as 
the reason and justification of his boldness, we must 
suppose him to be clear and exact in stating its nature. 
And when, under such circumstances, he calls himself a 
priest, we are not at liberty to suppose that he does not 
* Romans xv., 15, 16. 



THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 107 

mean precisely what he says. Indeed the supposition 
that he does not, would make him assign a false or 
insufficient reason for his boldness. There is therefore 
no figurative exaggeration of his office, and we can come 
to no other conclusion than that he meant to assert his 
office as a Christian minister to be that of the priesthood, 
or one fully equivalent to the priesthood. 

The same Apostle also uses the term altar as one 
applicable to the gospel dispensation : " We have an 
altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the 
tabernacle."* The Apostle proceeds in the verses 
immediately succeeding, to point out the sacrifice of 
Christ as that which is eaten at the Christian altar. 
Now surely the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews, 
who insists so strenuously upon the sufficiency of the 
one oblation once offered upon the cross, does not mean 
to assert the repetition of this oblation ; and no supposi- 
tion is so natural, as that which refers the participation 
or eating of the sacrifice of Christ, of which he speaks, 
to the great commemorative rite of that sacrifice. This 
supposition is strengthened by the fact that in the first 
epistle to the Corinthians, the same Apostle actually 
describes the Lord's supper as a feast upon the sacrifice 
of Christ: " ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table 
and of the table of devils." In this passage of Corinth- 
ians, (1 Cor. x. 16 — 21,) the Apostle is contrasting the 
Jewish and Pagan feasts upon their sacrifices, with the 
Christian feast at the Lord's table upon the sacrifice of 
Christ. What therefore he calls in the episde to the 
Corinthians the Lord's table, in the epistle to the He- 
brews he calls an altar, and by implication, the feast 
* Heb. xiii. 10. 



108 THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 

of the one passage is in the other a sacrifice, the great 
commemorative sacrifice of the Christian Church. 

The ancient prophets predicted the priesthood, and the 
pure unbloody offerings of the Christian dispensation. 
Thus Isaiah : "And they shall bring all your brethren 
for an offering unto the Lord, out of all nations, upon 
horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, 
and upon swift beasts, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, 
saith the Lord, as the children of Israel bring an offer- 
ing in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord. And 
I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, 
saith the Lord."* Thus JYIalachi : " From the rising 
of the sun even unto the going down of the same, my 
name shall be great among the Gentiles ; and in every 
place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure 
offering : for my name shall be great among the hea- 
then, saith the Lord of Hosts. "t The pure offering 
here spoken of was explained by the fathers of the 
Christian Church, of the unbloody commemorative 
sacrifice of the Eucharist, of which all the ancient litur- 
gies make mention. Justin Martyr makes this com- 
ment upon the passage of Malachi : " He (that is God,) 
then foretold the sacrifices which are offered to him by 
us Gentiles, namely the Eucharist of bread and wine, 
whereby he says we glorify His Name. "J This inter- 
pretation of the early fathers is confirmed by the fact 
that the prophet uses the term (mincha,) which desig- 
nated the unbloody offerings among the Jews. 

It is time however, to consider the commission, which 
our Saviour gave his Apostles to their priestly office 
after his resurrection from the dead. It is recorded in 

* Is. lxvi. 20, 21. f Malachi L 1.1. * Dial, cum Tryph. 



THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 109 

the twentieth chapter of St. John's gospel; " Then said 
Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you : as my Father 
hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had 
said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Re- 
ceive ye the Holy Ghost. Whosesoever sins ye remit, 
they are remitted unto them ; and whosesoever sins ye 
retain, they are retained."* Now we have already seen 
that our Saviour had power on earth to forgive sins as 
the Son of Man; and the evangelist St. Matthew tells 
us that the exercise of this power on the part of our 
Saviour, led the multitudes to glorify God who had 
given such power unto men. As therefore he had been 
sent by his Father with power on earth to forgive sins, 
so when he was about to leave the earth he " sent" his 
Apostles, endowed them with the very same power 
which he himself as the Son of Man possessed, the 
power of ministerially forgiving sins. Such a power 
was eminently a priestly one, and the Apostles, by the 
commission which conveyed it to them, were as truly 
elevated to the office of priests under the Christian dis- 
pensation, as by the appointment unto them of a king- 
dom by our Saviour, Dr. Whately justly deems them 
to have been exalted to the station of rulers in the king- 
dom or Church of Christ. The Christian ministry in- 
strumentally forgive sins, convey from God forgiveness 
to those who repent and believe and obey, by proclaim- 
ing with authority the word of reconciliation and abso- 
lution ; by administering the one baptism for the remis- 
sion of sins ; by celebrating the Holy Eucharist, in 
which the faithful are partakers of that body that was 
broken, and that blood that was shed for the remission 
* John xx. 21, 22, 23. 

10* 



110 THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 

of sins. They retain sins to those who attend these 
offices without the exercise of penitence and faith. 
They remit and retain sins in the exercise of the disci- 
pline of the Church. Their exclusion of the impenitent 
and unbelieving from the privileges of the Church, is 
ratified in heaven as an exclusion from the blessings of 
the gospel covenant; and their restitution of penitent 
offenders obtains a like sanction in the court of heaven. 
This exercise of the discipline of the Church is that 
power of binding and loosing, which has been most sol- 
emnly committed to them. This is the explanation which 
our Saviour himself gives of this power: "Moreover, 
if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him 
his fault between thee and him alone ; if he shall hear 
thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not 
hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in 
the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may 
be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, 
tell it unto the Church ; but if he neglect to hear the 
Church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a 
publican. Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall 
bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven ; and whatsoever 
ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven."* 
Here the power of binding and loosing is explained to 
be the infliction and release of Church censures, in the 
name and by the authority of Christ, an explanation 
quite different from that given by Dr. Whately. 

A part of the priestly office, which we have not yet 
considered, is well expressed in the words of Arch- 
Bishop Potter : " But it must be considered farther that 
to present the people's prayers to God, and to intercede 

*Matt. xviii. 15, 16, 17, 18. 



THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. Ill 

with him to bless them, has always been reckoned an 
essential part of the sacerdotal office. Thus it was all 
over the heathen world, as well as in the Jewish Church. 
And it seems to have been an universal notion, that the 
priests are intercessors between God and men, who 
communicate the laws of God and impart his blessing 
to the people ; and on the other side, convey the peo- 
ple's devotion to God. Whence Philo observes of the 
Jewish high priest, " That the law required him to be 
raised above human nature to a proximity with God, 
that being placed as it were in a middle station, between 
God and man, he may supplicate God in the behalf of 
men, and carry to men the graces of God." And our 
Lord's intercession is reckoned a principal part of his 
sacerdotal office : whence we are told, that he is entered 
into heaven itself, to appear in the presence of God for 
us ; that he intercedes for us at the right hand of God : 
and that, if any man sin, we have an advocate with the 
Father, even Jesus Christ. Indeed this prevalent inter- 
cession of Christ is made by pleading to God the merit 
of his death ; and in like manner the Jewish high priest 
interceded for the people's sins, by presenting to God 
the blood of sacrificed victims. Consequently the 
Christian presbyter, who has no new propitiatory sacri- 
fice to offer, cannot perform this act of the sacerdotal 
office in the very same manner wherein it was executed 
by other priests ; but then he prays for the Christian 
congregation in the name of Christ, whose meritorious 
sacrifice he is authorized to represent and plead to God, 
with infinitely greater success than could be done upon 
any new and distinct oblation. So that the Christian 
priests are so far from being inferior to those of the 



112 THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 

Jews, in this part of the sacerdotal office, that they 
rather excel them." 

" And this has always been reckoned one chief duty 
of the sacerdotal office in the Christian Church. The 
Apostles join the offices of prayer and preaching to- 
gether ; we, say they, will give ourselves continually to 
prayer, and to the ministry of the word* Several other 
duties were incumbent on them, but these two are par- 
ticularly mentioned, as the principal, and those which 
required their most constant attendance. The prophets 
and teachers at Antioch are said tevtougyZw t.» Ksgbft, to 
minister to the Lord and fast : where ministering to the 
Lord is meant of praying, as appears not only because 
it is joined with fasting, but also because this and the 
like expressions are commonly used in that sense. St. 
James directs sick persons to send for the presbyters of 
the Church to pray and intercede for them, with a pro- 
mise of success and having their sins forgiven. And 
the twenty-four elders in the Revelation, who represent 
the ministers of the Christian Church, have every one 
of them golden vials, full of incense, which is the prayers 
of the saints. Which is an allusion to that incense which 
was offered by the Jewish priests, and mystically signi- 
fied the prayers of the people. So that what was mys- 
tically offered by the Jewish priests, is here intimated to 
be literally presented to God by the Christian."* Hence 
in a sense, of course infinitely inferior to that in which 
Christ is the Mediator of the gospel covenant, his min- 
isters were called by some fathers of the ancient Church, 
mediators between God and his people, — their media- 

* Ch. Government, page 221 seq. Amer. Edition. 



THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 113 

lion being understood to be of a strictly ministerial 
character. 

As those, therefore, who are authorized to offer up 
the prayers of the Church, to dispense the word of re- 
conciliation, to declare the word of absolution, to bless 
the people in God's holy name, to administer the sacra- 
ments of the gospel, to bind and to loose in the disci- 
pline of the Church, and thus to be the instruments of 
God in giving power and effect to his gospel, the minis- 
ters of the Christian dispensation are truly the priests of 
the Most High, and both the name and the realities of 
the priesthood are attributed to them in the Scriptures of 
the Old and the New Testament. 

And in this light they have always been regarded in 
the Christian Church. The office of the priesthood is 
ascribed to them in the earliest uninspired records of 
the Church. Says Ignatius, in his epistle to the Tral- 
lians, " He that is within the altar is pure, but who- 
ever does any thing without the bishop, the college of 
presbyters, and the deacons, his conscience is denied." 
It were superfluous to quote succeeding writers, for 
from Tertullian downward the priesthood was the usual 
and admitted appellation of the Christian ministry. The 
three orders of the ministry were regarded as so many 
different degrees of participation in the Christian priest- 
hood. Thus Optatus, speaking of the Traditors in the 
time of the Persecution under Diocletian, says, "Why 
should I speak of deacons in the third rank of the 
priesthood, or of presbyters in the second ? The very 
chief and foremost of all, some bishops in those times 
impiously delivered up the documents of the divine 
law. 1 ' Bingham, in enlarging upon this passage of 



114 THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 

Optatus, says, "Thus it was an act of the prie 
office to offer up the sacrifice of the people's prayers 
praises and thanksgivings to God, as their mouth and 
orator, and to make intercession to God for them. An- 
other part of the office was in God's name to biess the 
people, particularly by admitting them to the benefit 
and privilege of remission of sins by spiritual regenera- 
tion or baptism. And thus far deacons were anciently 
allowed to minister in holy things, as mediators between 
God and the people ; upon which account a late learned 
writer joins entirely with Optatus, in declaring deacons 
to be sharers in this lowest degree of the Christian 
priesthood. Above this was the power of offering up 
to God the people's- sacrifices at the altar ; that is, as 
Mr. Mede and others explain them, first, the eucharist- 
ical oblations of bread and wine, to agnize or acknow- 
ledge God to be the Lord of the creatures, then the 
sacrifice of prayer and thanksgiving, in commemoration 
of Christ's bloody sacrifice upon the cross,, mystically 
represented in the creatures of bread and wine ; which 
whole sacred action was commonly called the Chris~ 
tian's reasonable and unbloody sacrifice, or the sacri- 
fice of the altar. Now the deacons (as we shall see in 
the next chapter) were never allowed to offer these ob- 
lations at the altar, but it was always a peculiar act of 
the presbyter's office, which was therefore reckoned a 
superior degree of the priesthood. Another act of the 
priestly office was to interpret the mind and will of 
God to the people, as also to bless them solemnly in 
his name, and upon confession and repentance grant 
them ministerial absolution; and these being also the 
ordinary offices of presbyters, they gave them a further 



THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 115 

title to the priesthood. All these offices, and some more, 
the bishops could perform, such as the solemn conse- 
cration or benediction of persons set apart for the min- 
istry, &c, which, together with their spiritual jurisdic- 
tion, or power of ruling and governing the church, as 
vicars of Christ, gave them a title to a yet higher degree 
of the Christian priesthood , whence, as I noted before, 
they were called chief priests. Primi sacerdotes, 
summi sacerdotes, principes sacerdotem, and pontifices 
maximiy* 

The coincidence between this view and the practice 
of our own church is striking. She admits her deacons 
to this lower degree of the priesthood only. She em- 
powers her presbyters ministerially to remit and retain 
sins in the very words of the original priestly commis- 
sion of our Saviour to his Apostles ; she empowers 
them to " declare and pronounce" authoritative absolu- 
tion and benediction, to make the eucharistical oblation 
of bread and wine, which, with the accompanying ser- 
vice, she terms " a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiv- 
ing ;" and the highest degree of the priesthood she 
lodges in her bishops. 

The term Priest, as distinguished from Presbyter, is 
used in the Institution office. The connection between 
the Presbyter and his flock is called a " sacerdotal con- 
nection" ; he is empowered " to perform every act of 
sacerdotal function among the people" of his parish; 
the Psalms of this office are selected with peculiar re- 
ference to the Church and its priesthood, as, for example, 
the 132d, verse 9, "Let thy priests be clothed with 
righteousness, and let thy saints shout for joy ; ' v. 16, 
* Bingham's Antiquities. Book II. oh 19. sec 15. 



116 THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 

"I will also clothe her priests with salvation, and iier 
saints shall shout aloud for joy." See also Psalm 133. 
The instituted minister is prayed for as one " who is 
now appointed to offer the sacrifices of prayer and 
praise to thee in this house, which is called by thy 
name." In short, the whole tenor of the office shows 
conclusively and unanswerably that our Church does 
believe in a. priesthood under the Christian dispensation 
as real, as holy, as effective as that which existed under 
the Jewish. The same thing is shown by the Latin 
title of the 32d Article, " De conjugio Sacerdotum" In- 
deed the English title of the Article is equally conclu- 
sive, when compared with the Article itself. The title 
is, " Of the Marriage of Priests" and under this term 
Priests, as appears from the Article, the Church in- 
cludes "bishops, priests and deacons," whom she re- 
gards as sharers, in different degrees, of the one priest- 
hood of the gospel. The term " Priests" is evidently 
used in the Article and its title in different senses. In 
the Article, it is used in the sense of Presbyter ; in the 
title, in the sense ls^vs, or sacerdos. Since, then, the 
Church does believe in the priestly office of her minis- 
ters, the inference is clear and strong, that in the rubric 
before the " Declaration of absolution," and in the 
rubrics of the communion service, the word priest is 
used in the same sense in which it is in the office of 
institution, since the declaration of absolution and the 
celebration of the communion are, by our Church, re- 
garded as among the highest acts of the priesthood. 

And it were easy to show that the word priest was 
familiarly used by the Anglican Reformers in the sense 
of w£swh which is often strenuously objected to. This 



THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 117 

appears from the title of the Article already referred to ; 
it appears also from the familiar use of the term in the 
31st Article. In the baptismal office of the English 
Church, the minister of baptism is termed a priest, 
although he may belong to any one of the three orders 
of the Christian ministry. Cranmer's view of the 
priesthood is seen in the following extract from his writ- 
ings. In the fifth book of " Defence of the True and 
Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and 
Blood of our Saviour Christ," in chapter ninth, he re- 
futes the error of those who " put the oblation of the 
priest in the stead of the oblation of Christ, refusing to 
receive the sacrament of his body and blood themselves, 
as he ordained, and trusting to have remission of their 
sins by the sacrifice of the priest in the mass," &c. He 
concludes, " And briefly to conclude, he that thinketh 
to come to the kingdom of Christ himself must keep 
his commandments himself, and do all things that per- 
tain to a Christian man and to his vocation himself, lest 
if he refer these things to another man to do them for 
him, the other may with as good right claim the king- 
dom of heaven for him. Therefore Christ made no 
such difference between the priest and the layman, that 
the priest should make oblation and sacrifice of Christ 
for the layman, and eat the Lord's Supper from him all 
alone and distribute and apply it as him liketh. Christ 
made no such differences, but the difference that is 
between the priest and the layman in this matter is 
only in the ministration ; that the priest, as a common 
minister of the Church, doth minister and distribute the 
Lord's Supper unto other, and other receive it at his 
hands. But the very supper itself was by Christ insti- 

11 



118 THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 

tuted and given to the whole Church, not to be offered 
and eaten of the priest for other men, but by him to be 
delivered to all that would duly ask it." 

"As in a prince's house the officers and ministers 
prepare the table, and yet other as well as they eat the 
meat and drink the drink ; so do the priests and minis- 
ters prepare the Lord's Supper, read the gospel, and 
rehearse Christ's words ; but all the people say thereto, 
Amen ; all remember Christ's death, all give thanks to 
God, all repent and offer themselves an oblation to 
Christ, all take him for their Lord and Saviour, and spi- 
ritually feed upon him ; and in token thereof they eat 
the bread and drink the wine of his mystical supper." 

"And this nothing diminisheth the estimation and 
dignity of priesthood and other ministers of the Church, 
but advanceth and highly commendeth their ministra- 
tion. For if they are much to be loved, honored, and 
esteemed, that be the king's chancellors, judges, 
officers, and ministers in temporal matters : how much 
then are they to be esteemed that be ministers of 
Christ's words and sacraments, and have to them com- 
mitted the keys of heaven to let in and shut out, by the 
ministration of his word and gospel."* Cranmer here 
clearly insists upon ^priesthood in the Christian Church, 
which by its ministerial power derived from Christ, is 
distinguished from the people. And in like manner, the 
reformer Jewell, in the reign of Elizabeth, uses famil- 
iarly the Latin word Sacerdotium of the office of the 
ministers of the Reformed Church.t 

* Remains, &c. vol. II. 455, 456. 

•j- See for example two letters to Peter Martyr, Book 6 of Re- 
cords appended to Burnet's Reformation : Nos. 50 and 56. Pages 
554 and 561. Edit : Appleton. 



THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 119 

Cranmer fully admitted and defended the commemo- 
rative sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist : " The contro- 
versy is not, whether in the holy communion he made 
a sacrifice or not, [for herein both Dr. Smyth (his 
Romish antagonist) and I agree with the foresaid 
Council of Ephesus,) but whether it be a propitiatory 
sacrifice or not, and whether only the priest make the 
said sacrifice ; these be the points wherein we vary. 
And I say so far as the Council saith, that there is a 
sacrifice ; but that the same is propitiatory for the remis- 
sion of sin, or that the priest alone doth offer it, neither 
I nor the Council do so say, but Dr. Smyth hath added 
that of his own vain head."* Again. " The offering 
on the cross, say you, was and is propitiatory and satis- 
factory for our redemption and remission of sin, the 
effect whereof is given and dispensed in the sacrament 
of baptism, once likewise ministered, and never to be 
iterate ; but the catholic doctrine teacheth not that the 
daily sacrifice is an iteration of the once perfected sacri- 
fice on the cross, but a representation thereof, showing 
it before the faithful eyes, and refreshing our memory 
therewith, so that we may see with the eye of faith the 
very body and blood of Christ, by God's mighty power 
exhibited unto us, the same body and blood that suffered 
and was shed for us. This is a godly and catholic doc- 
trine, "t Again. " Hippinus declareth that the old fathers 
called the supper of our Lord a sacrifice for two consid- 
erations, one was for the presence of Christ's flesh and 
blood, the other was for the offerings which the people 
gave there of their devotion to the holy ministration, and 
relief of the poor. But Hippinus speaketh here not one 
* Remains, &c. III. 4. j- Remains, &c. III. 541. 



120 THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 

word of corporal presence, nor of propitiatory sacrifice, 
but generally of presence and sacrifice, which maketh 
nothing for your purpose nor against me, that grant 
both a presence and a sacrifice"* " Christ made the 
bloody sacrifice which took away sin, the priests with the 
Church make a commemoration thereof with lauds and 
thanksgiving, offering also themselves obedient to God 
unto death. And yet this our sacrifice taketh not away 
our sins, nor is not accepted but by his sacrifice. "t " It is 
not true that the offering in the celebration of the supper 
is not renewed again. For the same offering that is made 
in one supper is daily renewed and made again in every 
supper, and is called the daily sacrifice of the Church. "% 
This doctrine of a commemorative sacrifice in the Holy 
Eucharist, has also been taught by the leading divines of 
the Church of England since the Reformation. Arch- 
Bishop Potter thus expresses it: "So that it is plain, 
both from the design and nature of the Lord's Supper, 
and from the concurrent testimony of the most primitive 
fathers, who conversed with the Apostles or their disci- 
ples, that it was reckoned throughout the whole world 
to be a commemorative sacrifice, or the memorial of our 
Lord offered upon the cross, which being first dedicated 
to God by prayer and thanksgiving, and afterwards eaten 
by the faithful, was to all intents the same to them as if 
they had really eaten the natural body and blood of 
Christ, which are thereby represented. The conse- 
quence whereof, as explained by the constant practice 
of the Church in all ages, is, that they who consecrate 

* Remains, &c. III. 551, 552. f Remains, &c. III. 534. 
i Remains, &c. III. 163, 164. See also III. 160, 161, 543, 544. 



THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH. 121 

this sacrament must be priests in the Christian sense of 
this name, as was before observed."* 

In the words immediately following, Archbishop 
Potter gives the true reason of the prejudice which 
exists against names and titles that have ever been held 
sacred in the Church : " But it is not to be wondered, 
that those of the reformed religion have either wholly 
abstained from the names of sacrifice or oblation, or 
mention them with caution and reserve in explaining 
this sacrament, which were used by the primitive fathers 
in a very true and pious sense, since they have been so 
grossly abused by the papists in their doctrine of the 
mass, which depends upon their other absurd doctrine 
of transubstantiation, which is the daily occasion of 
many superstitious and idolatrous practices, and has for 
several ages given infinite scandal both to the Jews and 
Gentiles, and to the Church of God." 

But surely because Rome has abused and perverted 
catholic doctrine and usage, and the very name Catholic, 
we are not therefore to desert them. It were a pity and 
a betrayal of trust to give up the truth because it has 
been corrupted, when we may separate the pure gold of 
the sanctuary from the dross of human invention, nay 
more, when it is separated for us in the standards of our 
own Church. If we should pursue such a course, we 
should renounce our Bibles, our Sabbaths, our sacra- 
ments, our ministry, our fasts and festivals, for all these 
have been abused by the Church of Rome. And shall 
we renounce our true Christian priesthood, because 
Rome has elevated hers to a height of superstition, 
which trendies upon the mediation of the Saviour ; 

* Chuhch Government, page 245. Amer. edit. 
11* 



122 THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CH1RCII. 

because, instead of priests, who are mere instrumental 
dispensers of the Saviour's gTace, she has made the effi- 
cacy of His sacraments dependent upon the intention 
and the caprice of frail, sinful man, and entrusted to him 
without higher control the key of the kingdom of hea- 
ven ? And because Rome has most wofully disparaged 
the one oblation finished upon the cross by her oft 
repeated propitiatory sacrifice, shall we cast away the 
true and solid comfort of that commemorative sacrificial 
rite, which represents to God the precious blood-shed- 
ding of his Son, and obtains for us, through the Saviour's 
intercession, the manifold blessings of peace and pardon 
and eternal life ? We will not thus be robbed of the 
treasures w r hich God has sent us from heaven, and 
which are the earnests of our promised inheritance, 
We will adhere to the appointments of God and rever- 
ence them, and use them with holy faith. Thus writing 
them on the tablets of the heart, growing in grace, ripen- 
ing in holiness by their instrumentality, they will be in 
us a well of water gushing from the rock Christ Jesus, 
and springing up unto everlasting life, 



CHAPTER VI. 

DECISIONS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

Dr. Whately endeavors to make of no account, by 
turning into ridicule, appeals to the early records of the 
Church, and deference to the witness of Catholic Anti- 
quity. The evidence of the primitive Church he con- 
siders inaccessible to the mass of Christians. Speaking 
of an appeal to antiquity, he says: "Every thing in 
short pertaining to this appeal is obscure, — uncertain, — 
disputable — and actually disputed, — to such a degree, 
that even those who are not able to read the original 
authors may yet be perfectly competent to perceive how 
unstable a foundation they furnish. They can perceive 
that the mass of Christians are called on to believe and 
to do what is essential to Christianity, in implicit reli- 
ance on the reports of their respective pastors, as to 
what certain deep theological antiquarians have reported 
to them, respecting the reports given by certain ancient 
fathers, of the reports current in their times, concerning 
apostolical usages and institutions."* 

Ridicule is no test of truth, especially when it has 
misrepresentation for its basis. This account of Dr. 
Whately of the appeal to primitive testimony is utterly 
unfair. The writers in each age of the Christian Church 

* Page 137. 



124 DECISIONS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

are consulted as witnesses of the usages and institutions 
of their own tirnes, and not as retailers of " reports 
current in their times, concerning apostolical usages 
and institutions." And it is by tracing this witness from 
age to age, to the Apostolic age, that we obtain a chain 
of testimony which is catholic, and which connects us 
with the Apostles themselves. 

Nor is this testimony inaccessible to the mass of 
Christians. Its results in the Anglican and American 
churches, are embodied in the authorized standards of 
these respective churches, and the light which these 
results shed upon Scripture, their correspondence with 
Scripture, their being the key to a correct understanding 
of Scripture, to an understanding of Scripture which 
commends itself to men who are in search of truth, is 
the good and solid evidence to unlearned Christians, of 
the reality of the claims of catholic teaching to apos- 
tolical derivation. It is like the tally-sticks of epistolary 
correspondence among the ancients. A presentation of 
the stick which the parchment fitted made the epistle 
legible, and thus showed that it was meant to be the 
interpreter of the letter. Those Christians who walk 
in the light of Catholic teaching have a perception of 
the fullness and entireness of the gospel scheme as pre- 
sented in Scripture, which is ordinarily vouchsafed to no 
others. They are the true Bible Christians, because 
they understand Scripture in its fullness and its integrity. 

But Dr. Whately, not content with objecting the diffi- 
culty and uncertainty of the appeal to primitive teach- 
ing, endeavors to show that the existence of the Catholic 
Church is a mere figment of the imagination. And on 
this subject he adopts the Romish view, and thus directly 



DECISIONS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 125 

plays into the hands of the Romanists. He says — 
" when and where did any one visible community, 
comprising all Christians as its members, exist? Does 
it exist still ? Is its authority the same as formerly ? 
And again, who are its rulers and other officers, right- 
fully claiming to represent Him who is the acknowledged 
Head of the universal (or catholic) Church, Jesus Christ, 
and to act as his Vicegerents on earth ? For it is plain 
that no society that has a supreme governor, can per- 
form any act as a society, and in its corporate capacity, 
without that supreme governor, either in person or 
represented by some one clearly deputed by him and 
invested with his authority. ****** Who 
then are to be recognized as rulers of (not merely in) 
the universal Church? Where (on earth) is its central 
supreme government, such as every single community 
must have ? Who is the accredited organ empowered 
to pronounce its decrees in the name of the whole com- 
munity ? And where are these decrees registered ?"* 

What a passage is this to be written by a Christian 
and a Protestant ! By a Christian, as if the presence 
of Christ by his Spirit in his Church were not fully 
equivalent for all purposes of its preservation and en- 
lightenment, and for the maintenance of the integrity of 
its faith, to his presence, "either in person, or repre- 
sented by some one clearly deputed by him and invested 
with his authority." By a Protestant, as if the testi- 
mony of the catholic Church could not be collected with- 
out a " central supreme government on earth," and " an 
accredited organ empowered to pronounce its decrees, 
in the name of the whole community." 
* Page 138, 139. 



126 DECISIONS OF THE CATHOLIC CHUKCII. 

The Romanists claim that a catholic Church, without 
a central supreme government on earth, and an accredited 
organ empowered to pronounce its decrees ex cathedra, 
is a nullity; and this claim of the Romanists Dr. 
Whately grants, and yet has subscribed to creeds, one 
of the articles of which is, " I believe in the Holy 
Catholic Church," and one of which declares, " Who- 
soever will be saved : before all things it is necessary 
that he hold the Catholic faith. Which Faith, except 
every one do keep whole and undented : without doubt 
he shall perish everlastingly." 

Dr. Whately asks, " Where are the decrees of the 
catholic Church registered? Who is the accredited 
organ empowered to pronounce its decrees?" We 
answer, its faith is registered and defined in its creeds. 
Its organs are various. Among them are the occupants 
of its undivided episcopate, of whom Cyprian thus 
speaks : " The episcopate is one, of which an undivided 
share is held by every bishop."* And again, in direct 
opposition to Dr. Whately's view, that the bishop of 
any particular Church is not a bishop of the universal 
Church, Cyprian says, "although we are many pastors 
nevertheless we feed one flock, and we ought to collect 
and cherish all the sheep which Christ has purchased 
by his blood and passion."! Cyprian wrote this in a 
letter to Stephen, Bishop of Rome, exhorting him to 
provide for the flock of Marcian, Bishop of Aries, who 
had become a schismatic ; and this on the ground that 
every bishop was a bishop of the catholic Church, and 
that it was therefore his duty to provide for its faith and 
purity. "For, for this very reason," says Cyprian, 
* De Unitate Ecclesi®. f Ep. 67, al. 68. 



DECISIONS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 127 

" most dear brother, is there a full choir of priests, 
joined together by the cement of mutual concord and 
by the bond of unity, so that if any one of our college 
attempts to introduce heresy, and to lacerate and devas- 
tate the flock of Christ, the others may come to its 
assistance, and as efficient and compassionate shepherds 
collect the Lord's sheep into the fold." Was there no 
reality in the days of Cyprian in the idea of a catholic 
Church ? and no security in the body of bishops against 
the inroads of heresy? And yet Cyprian does not men- 
tion what Dr. Whately, yielding the ground to the 
Romanists, thinks necessary to effective catholicity, a 
central supreme government on earth, and an accredited 
organ to pronounce the decrees of the Church in the 
name of the whole community. The care of each 
bishop for the whole Church in the days of Cyprian, 
proved a safeguard of the Church's faith. 

On this subject, Bingham says : " In things that did 
not appertain to the faith, they (the bishops) were not to 
meddle with other men's dioceses, but only to mind the 
business of their own ; but when the faith or welfare of 
the whole Church lay at stake, and religion was mani- 
festly invaded, then, by this rule of there being but one 
episcopacy, every other bishopric was as much their 
diocese as their own; and no human laws or canons 
could tie up their hands from performing such acts of 
their episcopal office in any part of the world, as they 
thought necessary for the preservation of religion."* 
In the next section, Bingham gives "some particular 
instances of private bishops acting as bishops of the 
whole universal Church." He says, " when the 

* Oris. Ecc. Book II. Ch. V. See. 2d. 



128 DECISIONS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

Church was in danger of being overrun with Arianism, 
the great Athanasius, as he returned from his exile, made 
no scruple to ordain in several cities as he went along, 
though they were not in his own diocese. And the 
famous Eusebius, of Samosata, did the like in the times 
of the Arian persecution under Valens. Theodoret 
says : '« He went about all Syria, Phoenicia, and Pales- 
tine, in a soldier's habit, ordaining presbyters and dea- 
cons, and setting in order whatever he found wanting in 
the churches." Certainly in those days there must 
have been a catholic Church, and a catholic faith, and 
bishops too, not merely in, but of the catholic Church, 
and as such, acting to preserve and transmit its faith. 

Another organ of the catholic Church is, those coun- 
cils of bishops, whose determinations in matters of faith 
have always been received by Christians. The first six 
councils are recognized in the homilies. The homily 
against Peril of Idolatry, speaks of them as " those six 
councils, which were allowed and received of all men." 
The authority of the General Councils was taken for 
granted and argued from through the whole progress of 
the Anglican Reformation. 

Another organ of the testimony of the catholic Church, 
is to be found in the writings of its doctors, when they 
bear witness, as often they do, to the doctrines and the 
practices of the Church in their own times. The litur- 
gies of the various branches of the Church also bear 
witness, of a most important kind, to its doctrines and 
usages. 

Now these means of information, notwithstanding all 
captious reasoning to disparage them, are tangible and 
available, and the information which they convey of the 



DECISIONS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 129 

doctrine and institutions of the Church is known and 
possessed. It is thus that the catholic doctrine of the 
Trinity, and the true view of our Lord's nature and per- 
son, have been preserved against the assaults of Arians, 
Semi-Arians, Macedonians, Nestorians, Eutychians, 
Sabellians, and Monothelites. It is thus that the doc- 
trines of grace have been rescued from the perversions 
of the Pelagians. It is thus that we have the witness 
of the Church to all the fundamental articles of the 
Christian faith. It is thus that an apostolic ministry, 
the right administration of the Christian sacraments, 
and the baptism of infants, are established by catholic 
testimony supported by Scripture. And yet with all 
this precious body of truth and institutions thus trans- 
mitted, we are called upon to believe a catholic Church, 
which is an active agent in the preservation and delivery 
from age to age, of Christian faith and practice, with the 
Christian Scriptures, and supported by them, a nullity, 
a mere figment of imagination ! 

After all the plain, palpable results of the teaching of 
the catholic Church, Dr. Whately asks, " when and 
where did any one visible community, comprising all 
Christians as its members, exist? Does it exist still?" 
Is not, we ask, the visibility of the Church taught in 
Scripture ? Are not all Christians baptized into the one 
body of Christ ? Are they not a city set on a hill ? And 
has not this body of baptized Christians always existed, 
and does it not now exist? And were they not baptized 
into the Christian Faith ? And can we not therefore 
ascertain the faith into which they were baptized ? The 
faith was certainly not designed to be shut up in the 
Scriptures, as in a treasure-house, which is open to no 

la 



130 DECISIONS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

man ; but it was designed for the possession of Chris- 
tians, and if it be and has been in their possession, we 
can most surely ascertain what this possession is. 

And what the faith of the catholic Church has always 
been, has been ascertained, and is a guide and a light and 
a help to us in the reading of Scripture. It would be a 
help to us if it were merely the result of the independent 
interpretation of Scripture by every age of the Church. 
The resistance of such a consent of Christians would be 
morally certain to lead us into error, But the consent 
of the catholic Church is more. The faith which the 
Apostles once delivered to the saints, has never died out. 
It has lived ever since its first promulgation, and been 
supported by Scripture, and shed light upon the pages 
of Scripture. The testimony of the Church therefore 
is the harmony between the preaching and the writing 
of the Apostles, and is the genuine sense of Scripture. 

And it is singular that Dr. Whately, after arguing 
against the very existence of tangible catholic testimony, 
should in effect admit it, and place upon it a qualified 
reliance. He says: "Many again are misled by the 
twofold ambiguity in the phrase " Authority of the 
Catholic (or Universal) Church," both " authority," 
and " Church," being often employed in more than 
one sense. Authority in the sense, not of power, but of 
a claim to attention and to deference (more or less as 
the case may be) belongs, of course, to the " Universal 
Church," meaning thereby, not, any single society, 
but Christians generally throughout all regions ; — the 
" Christian World," or (in modern phraseology) " the 
Christian Public." Whatever is, or has been, attested, 
or believed, or practised, by all of these, or by the 



DECISIONS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 131 

greater part of them, or by several of those whom we 
may regard as the best and wisest among them, — is, of 
course, entitled to a degree of attentive and respectful 
consideration, greater or less according to the circum- 
stances of each case."* In the note (K.) to which he 
refers, he still more explicitly defines one sense and that 
the "primary sense" of "authority," to be reference to 
any one's example, testimony or judgment," and then 
he says : " The Authority (in the primary sense) of the 
catholic, i. e. universal Church, at any particular period, 
is often appealed to in support of this or that doctrine or 
practice: and it is, justly, supposed that the opinion of 
the great body 'of the Christian world affords a presump- 
tion (though only a presumption) in favor of the cor- 
rectness of any interpretation of Scripture, or the expe- 
diency, at the time, of any ceremony, regulation," &c. 

This is, to be sure, a very guarded admission, but still 
it is something. Dr. Whately cannot divest himself of 
the idea that expediency is the highest element, which 
enters into the regulations of the Christian Church. 
Perhaps not the least value of the guarded admission, 
which we have just quoted, is, that it rejects the Romish 
sophistry, which we have seen that Dr. Whately has 
elsewhere adopted, that there can be no effective catho- 
lic Church, which is not a single society organized 
under an earthly head. Dr. Whately, it seems, can 
conceive under the names " the Christian World," and 
the " Christian Public," of a catholic Church without 
a central earthly government, whose doctrine and prac- 
tice can be ascertained. 

He strenuously denies that the Church upon earth is 
* Page 146, 147. 



132 DECISION'S OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

one as a society : " The Church is undoubtedly one, and 
so is the human race one; but not as a society ,"*—- 
" The Church is one, then, not as consisting of one 
society, but because the various societies or churches 
were then modelled, and ought still to be so, on the same 
principles ; and because they enjoy common privileges, 
— one Lord, one Spirit, one Baptism."! 

Now we are bold to say that this view is neither scrip- 
tural nor primitive. We do not indeed entertain the idea, 
which seems to haunt Dr. Whately like a phantom from 
the Romish camp, that the Church cannot be one society 
without the supremacy of one Church over all other 
churches ; but we do say that his idea of the unity of 
the Church can never be made to correspond with the 
strong views and expressions of Scripture upon this 
subject. St. Paul describes the Church as one body, of 
which Christ is the Head, and all Christians are mem- 
bers, and of which the Spirit is the one Life pervading 
the whole body. And how strong are the expressions 
of our Saviour's prayer, " That they all may be one ; 
as thou Father art in me, and I in thee ; that they may 
be one, even as we are one ; I in them, and thou in me, 
that they may be made perfect in one ; and that the world 
may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them 
as thou hast loved me." The unity for which our Sa- 
viour prayed was a unity of spirit manifesting itself in 
outward unity. It was a unity of which the world 
could take no cognizance. It was a unity so close that 
he compared it to that between himself and his Father. 

Can differing Church organizations be united in such 
a unity as this ? Can they be an organized body ? They 
* Page 141. f Page 142. 



DECISIONS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 133 

may be a conglomeration, but never an organization. 
And was not the Church one, when every bishop was 
regarded as a bishop of the catholic Church, and as 
such exercised his office, where the Liter se, Communi- 
catorias of every bishop in communion with the catho- 
lic Church, were a passport for those who held them, to 
communion in all parts of the Christian world, when 
there was one baptism, one apostolic ministry, one faith ? 
Was not the Church one society, when Irenseus, recit- 
ing the catholic faith added, " The Church having 
received this preaching and this faith, as we have said 
before, although it be scattered abroad throughout the 
whole world, carefully preserves it, dwelling as in one 
habitation, and believes alike in these (doctrines) as 
though she had one soul and the same heart ; and in 
strict accord, as though she had one mouth, proclaims, 
and teaches, and delivers on these things." ? 

The teaching of the catholic Church then is a reality, 
and that, although " there never was, since the days of 
the Apostles, any such body existing as could claim, 
on the plea of being the recognized representative of 
the whole Christian world, this " obedience" from each 
particular Church."* Notwithstanding this, there has 
been ever since the days of the Apostles, a catholic 
Church of Christ, and its witness to Christian truth and 
practice is our cherished possession. 

* Kingdom of Christ, page 147. 



12* 



CHAPTER VII. 

PRINCIPLE OF THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION. 

Dr. Whately introduces into his discussion of the 
subject of Church authority a consideration of the views 
of the Anglican Reformers. He admits that they ap- 
pealed to the records of the early Church, but says that 
they did so because their opponents the Romanists made 
this appeal, and that the Reformers followed them in the 
appeal, to rebut the charge of innovation which was 
brought against themselves. Their appeal to antiquity, 
according to Dr. Whately, was rather an argnmentum 
ad hominem addressed to their adversaries, than a 
resource which they would have used of their own 
accord, and if they wished, " that the teaching of the 
clergy should coincide with that of the early fathers,"* 
this arose from the simple fact of those fathers happen- 
ing to agree with themselves in doctrine. This is the 
substance of Dr. Whately's account of the appeal made 
by the Anglican Reformers, to the records and institu- 
tion of the early Church, and to the writings of the 
early fathers. 

Now we hope to show that this is not a full and fair 
account of our Reformers. They did not malve a mere 
negative appeal to the early Church to rebut the charge 

* Page 1 53. 



PRINCIPLE OF THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION. 135 

of novelty against themselves. They reverenced that 
Church, they regarded its sense of Scripture as the 
true sense of Scripture, and they listened to its teaching 
as docile scholars. 

Let us see, in the first place, what views on this sub- 
ject they have embodied in the standards of the Church. 
The Book of Prayer and offices is itself a relic of the 
olden times of the Church. The Reformers purged it 
from later corruptions, and restored it to its primitive 
lustre. The preface to the Reformed Ritual of 1548, 
still continued in the English Prayer Book, thus speaks 
of it, " So that here you have an order for prayer and 
for the reading of the Holy Scriptures, much agreeable 
to the mind and purpose of the old Fathers." In the 
Preface to the Ordinal, " Holy Scripture and Ancient 
Authors" are referred to as the ground of continuing in 
the Church the episcopal succession. This looks very 
much like blending Tradition with Scripture, not surely 
in the rank of co-ordinate authority, but as an interpreter 
for the right understanding of Scripture. We are not 
to suppose that " Holy Scripture and Ancient Authors" 
were used by our Reformers as authorities solely on the 
subject of the ministry. They would and did use them 
also in the investigation of other subjects. We have 
therefore in the preface to the Ordinal a specimen of 
their mode of procedure, a development and exemplifi- 
cation of the sure and cautious principle by which they 
advanced the work of the Reformation. 

Throughout the Homilies, the catholic councils and 
catholic fathers are continually appealed to with rever- 
ence. Thus for example, the teaching of the English 
Church on the subject of justification is defended : 



136 PRINCIPLE OF THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION. 

"And after this wise to be justified only by this true 
and lively faith in Christ, speak all the old and ancient 
authors, both Greeks and Latins." " These and other 
like sentences, that we be justified by faith only, freely, 
and without works, we do read oft times in the best and 
most ancient writers." " This faith the holy Scripture 
teacheth us ; this is the strong rock and foundation of 
Christian religion ; this doctrine ali old and ancient 
authors of Christ's Church do approve." And in like 
manner, in the Homily on the Eucharist, there is a full 
identification of the doctrine of our Church on that sub- 
ject with the doctrine of the ancient catholic Church : 
"The true understanding of this fruition and union, 
which is betwixt, the body and the head, betwixt the 
true believers and Christ, the ancient Catholic Fathers 
both perceiving themselves, and commending to their 
people, were not afraid to call this supper, some of them, 
the salve of immortality and sovereign preservative 
against death ; other, a deifical communion ; other, the 
sweet dainties of our Saviour, the pledge of eternal 
health, the defence of faith, the hope of the resurrec- 
tion ; other, the food of immortality, the healthful grace, 
and the conservatory to everlasting life. All which say- 
ings both of the holy Scripture and godly men, truly 
attributed to this celestial banquet and feast, if we would 
often call to mind, how would they inflame our hearts 
to desire the participation of these mysteries, and often- 
times to covet after this bread, continually to thirst for 
this food !" The writers of the Homilies lived in the 
primitive Church, and breathed its atmosphere, and 
honored its doctors, and revered its decisions, and ad- 
hered to its teaching. In the Homily against Peril of 



PRINCIPLE OF THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION. 137 

Idolatry, they refer most copiously to the testimony and 
practice of the ancient Church, and speak of it as "the 
old primitive Church, which was most uncorrupt and 
pure." 

It was the reading of ancient authors which led the 
Reformers Cranmer and Ridley, to renounce the popish 
tenet of transubstantiation, and to adopt that interpreta- 
tion of Scripture on the eucharist, which was sanctioned 
by primitive and catholic testimony. 

The Apology of Jewell came well nigh being adopted 
as a standard in the Church of England, and in it he 
says, " Now certainly there can nothing of more weight 
be said against religion, than that it is new ;" and again, 
11 Wherefore, if we are heretics, and they are (as they 
would be called) catholics, why do they not do that 
which they see the fathers and catholic men have always 
done ? Why do they not convince us out of the holy 
Scriptures ? Why do they not make it appear that we 
have departed from Christ, the prophets, Apostles, and 
holy fathers ?" The reformers of our Church acknow- 
ledged the Scriptures to be the only standard of ultimate 
appeal in matters of religious faith and practice, but 
they recognized the catholic sense of Scripture, as its 
true sense. Thus in the Apology, Jewell says : " The 
holy Scriptures, the writings of the Apostles and pro- 
phets, are now extant, from which both all truth and the 
catholic doctrine may be proved, and all heresy con- 
futed." And catholic antiquity was the instrument, by 
which they educed from Scripture catholic doctrine. 
They accepted, in other words, catholic antiquity as the 
interpreter of Scripture. Thus Bishop Jewell in his 
Apology further says : " We are come as near as we 



138 PRINCIPLE OF THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION. 

possibly could to the Church of the Apostles, and of 
the old catholic bishops and fathers ; and have directed, 
according to their customs and ordinances, not only our 
doctrine, but also the sacraments, and the form of com- 
mon prayer." And again : " Now we have ever thought, 
that the primitive Church, which was in the times of 
Christ and the Apostles and holy fathers, was the catho- 
lic Church. Nor do we doubt, but that that Church is 
the ark of Noah, the spouse of Christ, the pillar and 
foundation of truth ; or to place in it the hopes of our 
salvation" 

Deference to the witness of the primitive Church, 
adherence to catholic faith and practice, characterizes 
the whole of this Apology of Jewell, as will be evident 
to the most cursory reader. He states distinctly that 
the object of the Reformation was a return to the primi- 
tive Church : " for we considered that the reformation 
of religion was to be made by that which was the first 
pattern of it." For this rule will ever hold good against 
all heretics, saith the most ancient father Tertullian, 
"That that is true which is first, and that is adulterated 
and corrupted which is later." Irenaeus doth often 
appeal to the most ancient churches, who were the 
nearest to Christ, and which therefore were not at all 
likely to have erred. And why is not that course now 
taken also? Why do we not return to a conformity 
with the most ancient churches ?" 

The Anglican principle of interpreting Scripture was 
solemnly recognized in the canons of the convocation 
of 1571. In one of those canons, the clergy are 
enjoined, " that they never teach aught in a sermon, to 
be religiously held and believed by the people, but what 



PRINCIPLE OF THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION. 139 

is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old or New Testa- 
ment ; and which the catholic fathers and ancient bishops 
have collected from that very doctrine." 

The act passed in the reign of Edward, for commu- 
nion in both kinds, cited as its grounds, that such com- 
munion was " more agreeable to Christ's first institution 
and the practice of the Church for five hundred years."* 
At the disputation held at Oxford during the reign of 
Mary, " Ridley began with a protestation, declaring 
that whereas he had been formerly of another mind 
from what he was then to maintain, he had changed 
upon no worldly consideration, but merely for love of 
the truth, which he -had gathered out of the ivord of 
God and the holy fathers. "t 

This was the principle of the Reformers, upon which 
they not only opposed the papists, but upon which they 
founded every step of the Reformation. The " Neces- 
sary Doctrine and Erudition," agreed upon by convo- 
cation in 1543, has the following view of catholic tradi- 
tion, which has never been renounced, but, on the other 
hand, confirmed by the expressed sentiments of the lead 
ing Reformers, when they were confined in the reign of 
Mary, and by the canon of 1571, already cited, as well 
as by the preface to the Ordinal : " All those things 
which were taught by the Apostles, and have been by a 
whole universal consent of the Church of Christ ever 
sith that time taught continually, and taken always for 
true, ought to be received, accepted, and kept as a per- 
fect doctrine apostolic. "J It declares that all Chris- 
tians must take the articles of the creed, ' and interpre- 

* Burnet's Reformation", vol. II. 65. Edit. Appleton. 
f Burnkt vol. II. 438. * Formularies of Faith. Page 221. 



140 PRINCIPLE OF THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION. 

tate all the same things according to the self-same sen- 
tence and interpretation which the words of Scripture 
do signify, and the holy approved doctors of the Church 
do agreeably entreat and defend ;' and that they must 
refuse and condemn all opinions ' which were of long 
time past condemned in the four holy councils.' "* 

This principle was so familiar to the Reformers, and 
so constantly acted on by them, that it became with 
them a perfect axiom, carrying with itself its own proof. 
The public acts of the Reformers are supported by their 
recorded opinions. The protestation made by Cranmer, 
at his pretended degradation by the papists, is full and 
strong, and shows unequivocally on what principles the 
Anglican Reformation was conducted. We quote a por- 
tion of it: "And I protest, and openly confess, that in 
all my doctrine and preaching, both of the sacrament 
and of other my doctrine, whatsoever it be, not only I 
mean and judge those things as the catholic Church, and 
the most holy fathers of old, with one accord, have 
meant and judged, but also I would gladly use the same 
words that they used, and not use any other words, but 
to set my hand to all and singular their speeches, phrases, 
ways, and forms of speech, which they do use in their 
treatises upon the sacrament, and to keep still their 
interpretation." In this protestation he constantly 
conjoins " the most Holy Word of God," and " the 
Holy Catholic Church of Christ," as the grounds of 
"his doctrine, of what kind soever it be," and declares 
his adherence to "the sacred Scripture" and "the 
Holy Catholic Church of Christ from the beginning," 

* Formularies of Faith. Pa<re 227. 



PRINCIPLE OF THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION. 141 

" according to the exposition of the most holy and 
learned fathers and martyrs of the Church. 

This protestation of Cranmer is authoritative ; it is 
the dying assertion, by the prime mover of the Anglican 
Reformation, of the principle of that Reformation, and 
it is decisive of the fact that that principle was an 
acknowledgment of the authority of the primitive and 
catholic Church, and an acceptance of its doctrine and 
testimony as the interpreter of Scripture. Cranmer 
and Ridley both avowed their acceptance of the much 
abused rule of Vincentius Lirinensis, as a means of dis- 
tinguishing the catholic faith from the perversions of 
heresy and schism ; and Cranmer says in adopting this 
rule from Vincentius, that " it may be taken as a neces* 
sary witness for the receiving and establishing of the 
same, (the catholic faith,) with these three conditions, 
that the thing which we would establish thereby hath 
been believed in all places, ever, and by all men." 

Bishop Jewell's remarkable challenge in defence of 
the Reformation, is well known. In the pulpit at Paul's 
Cross, he declared, " If any learned man of our adver- 
saries, or all the learned men that be alive, be able to 
bring any one sufficient sentence, out of any old catholic 
doctor or father, or General Council, or Holy Scripture, 
or any one example in the primitive Church, whereby 
it may clearly and plainly be proved during the first six 
hundred years," — (here follow twenty-seven proposi- 
tions concerning the popish doctrine of the Mass,) and 
then the challenge continues, " If any one of our adver- 
saries be able to avouch any one of all these articles, by 
any such sufficient authority of Scriptures, doctors, or 
councils, as I have required ; as I have said before, so 

13 



142 PRINCIPLE OF THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION. 

say I now again, I am content to yield unto him and 
subscribe." 

These sentiments of our Reformers have been main- 
tained by the greatest divines of the Anglican Church, 
as might be most abundantly shown. Says Palmer in 
his Treatise on the Church, " So great is the reverence 
which we have always paid to that (catholic) tradition, 
that it has been remarked and judged excessive by some 
of the Lutheran and Calvinistic societies." The Lu- 
theran Walchius says: "To those who attribute too 
much to the fathers of the Church, the Episcopalians 
or hierarchicals as they are called in England, have 
united themselves ; amongst whom the authority of the 
fathers is very great, since they persuade themselves 
that they find in their writings a great support for their 
notion concerning the divine origin of the episcopate, 
and concerning the retention of the rites and discipline 
of the ancient Church. For this reason amongst others, 
they abhor the work of Daille on the use of the fathers, 
because they believe that he has detracted too much 
from their authority. Beveridge avows this."* Palmer 
also shows that reliance upon catholic antiquity has been 
objected to the Church of England, by Sociniaus and 
Free-Thinkers. 

Dr. Whately lays stress on the fact that our Reform- 
ers, " in the Article on the three Creeds, "t " take care 
distinctly to assign the ground on which those are to 
be retained;" viz : that " they may be proved by Holy 
Writ." But surely the creeds are not the very words 
of Holy Writ ; they are Catholic summaries and inter- 
pretations of Holy Writ) and by accepting these catho- 
* Palmer 03t Chubch. Vol. I. 460. j- P a 8 e 159, 



PRINCIPLE 05 THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION. 143 

lie expositions as they have always been held in the 
Church, and declaring that they " ought thoroughly to 
be received and believed," our Church distinctly recog- 
nizes catholic tradition as the interpreter of Scripture. 

Dr. Whatelv argues against the use of tradition from 
the abuse which men have, made of it, and from their 
tendencies to make such abuse of it,* but the fallacy of 
this reasoning must be evident to all. We are willing 
to accept his own illustration! of tradition, by the ten- 
dency of issues of paper money to depreciate, if they 
are not payable in coin upon demand, and to reject all 
tradition which is not payable in Scripture, and proved 
by Scripture. But as we would not pay coin to any 
but the holders of genuine notes, so will we not admit 
Scripture to correspond to any tradition, but that which 
bears the stamp of the catholic Church. 

Nor in accepting the light of universal tradition, do 
we disparage the clearness and the sufficiency of Scrip- 
ture. The use of tradition arises mainly from the frailty 
and perversity of man. To quote from Palmer, "Scrip- 
ture ought to be of itself sufficient for the overthrow of 
all errors against faith ; but since men are liable to be 
misled by the evil interpretations of others to misunder- 
stand the divine meaning of Scripture, the doctrine or 
tradition of Christians of all ages, i. e. of the catholic 
Church, is presented to us as a confirmation of the true 
meaning of Scripture. It is not meant that this tradi- 
tion conveys to us the exact interpretation of all the 
particular texts in the Bible. Its utility is of a simpler 
and more general character. It relates to the interpre- 
tation of Scripture as a whole, to the doctrine deduced 
* Vide Page 160, et seq. f Pages 170, 171, 172. 



144 PRINCIPLE OF THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION. 

from it in general. That doctrine, which claims to be 
deduced from Scripture, and which all Christians be- 
lieved from the beginning, must be truly scriptural. 
That doctrine which claims to be deduced from Scrip- 
ture, and which all the Church from the beginning repro- 
bated and abhorred, must be founded on a perversion and 
misrepresentation of Scripture."* 

Indeed it may be easily seen that those who reject 
universal tradition disparage the clearness of Scripture. 
For is the sense of Scripture plain and intelligible to 
each individual ? Is it not then plain and intelligible to 
all Christians? And is not the doctrine which the 
whole Church deduced from it in the very spring-tide 
of Christianity, its true doctrine ? Was not Scripture 
as clear to them, as it is to us ? And if we adhere not 
to the doctrine which they clearly deduced from Scrip- 
ture, do we not deeply disparage the plainness and 
sufficiency of the holy volume ? And because the 
Scriptures are clear and sufficient, shall we therefore 
unthankfully refuse the helps and safeguards, which 
God has furnished us against our own blindness and 
prejudice, and the perversions of deceived or deceiving 
men? 

With the- strong and striking words of Waterland, as 
quoted by Arch-Deacon Manning, in his treatise on the 
rule of faith, we conclude our discussion of this branch 
of the subject: " But it is further pleaded, that Scrip- 
ture is plain in all necessaries, and therefore needs no 
illustration from the ancients. We allow that Scripture 
is plain in necessaries ; yea, it is what we urge and 
contend for ; and there is nothing that offends us more, 
* Palmer ots Church. Vol. II. Page 49. 



PRINCIPLE OF THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION. 145 

than that many persons will endeavor notwithstanding, 
by violent contortions, far-fetched subtleties, and studied 
evasions, to elude and frustrate those plain things. Such 
conduct, on the adverse side, makes it the more neces- 
sary to have recourse to antiquity, for the greater 
security against all such attempts ; for while Scripture 
is plain, antiquity is plain also ; and two plain things 
are better than one. God himself hath taught us, by 
adding his oath to his promise, not to think any confir- 
mation superfluous, which he is pleased to afford us. 
His word alone might be safely depended upon, being 
certain and infallible ; but two immutable things afford 
the stronger consolation ; and God considers the infir- 
mities of mankind. In like manner, though Scripture 
be very plain to reasonable men, so far as concerns neces- 
saries, yet by taking in antiquity to it, the evidence, 
upon the whole, becomes both plainer and stronger. 
There is so much Aveakness commonly in human nature, 
and so much reluctance shown to the reception of divine 
truths, that we have need of all the plain things we can 
any where procure ; and had we twenty more as plain 
as these, we could make use of them all, and indeed 
should be obliged to do so, lest otherwise we should be 
found guilty of despising the blessings of heaven. It 
is certain that there is something very particular in the 
concerns of religion, that plain things there have not 
the same force or weight as they have any where else. 
It is the only subject in the world wherein a man may 
dispute the most certain facts, and most indubitable 
proofs, and yet be allowed to be in his senses ; for if 
any one, in the common affairs of life, were to make it 
a rule to believe nothing but what he sees, or were to 

13* 



146 PRINCIPLE OF THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION. 

reject the faith of all history, he would undoubtedly be 
despised or pitied by every body, as not well in his wits. 
Seeing, then, that the case of religion is so widely dif- 
ferent from all others, and that the plainest evidences 
there often lose their effect, we can never be too solicit- 
ous in accumulating evidence upon evidence, and testi- 
mony upon testimony, to do the most we can towards 
relieving the weakness, or conquering the reluctance of 
men slow to believe." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

RADICAL TENDENCIES OF DR. WHATELY's SYSTEM. 

Dr. Whately anticipates the radical and disorganiz- 
ing tendencies, which may be charged upon his system, 
and endeavors to parry them. He says : " Some have 
imagined however that since no rule is laid down in 
Scripture as to the number of persons requisite to form 
a Christian community, or as to the mode in which any 
such community is to be set on foot, it must follow that 
persons left to Scripture as their sole decisive authority, 
will be at liberty, — all, and any of them, — to form and 
dissolve religious communities at their pleasure ; — to 
join, and withdraw from, any Church, as freely as if it 
were a club or other such institution ; and to appoint 
themselves or others to any ministerial office, as freely 
as the members of any club elect presidents, secretaries, 
and other functionaries."* 

These consequences he denies to be legitimate ones 
of his system, and he illustrates this position by "the 
analogous case of civil government.'" He supposesf " a 
number of emigrants, bound for some colony, to be ship- 
wrecked on a desert island, such as afforded them means 
of subsistence, but precluded all reasonable hope of their 
* Page 192. f Page 193, 194, 195. 



148 RADICAL TENDENCIES OF 

quitting it," — or supposes "them to have taken refuge 
there as fugitives from intolerable oppression, or from a 
conquering enemy, or to be the sole survivors of a pesti- 
lence or earthquake, which had destroyed the rest of the 
nation," in such a case he deems them authorized to 
" regard themselves as constituted by the very circum- 
stances of their position, a civil community," and " to 
enact such laws, and appoint such magistrates as they 
might judge most suitable to their circumstances. And 
obedience to those laws and governors, as soon as the 
constitution was settled, would become a moral duty to 
all the members of the community : and this, even 
though some of the enactments might appear, or might 
be (though not at variance with the immutable laws of 
morality, yet) considerably short of perfection. The 
king, or other magistrates thus appointed, would be 
legitimate rulers ; and the laws framed by them valid 
and binding. The precept of "submitting to every 
ordinance of man for the Lord's sake," and of " ren- 
dering to all their due," would apply in this case as 
completely as in respect of any civil community that 
exists. And yet these men would have been doing, 
what, in ordinary circumstances, would have been 
manifest rebellion. ****** A similar rule 
will apply to the case of ecclesiastical communities. If 
any number of individuals,- — not having the plea of an 
express revelation to the purpose, or again, of their 
deliberate conviction that the Church they separate from 
is fundamentally erroneous and unscriptural — take upon 
themselves to constitute a new Church, according to 
their own fancy, and to appoint themselves or others to 
ministerial offices, without having any recognized 



dr. whately's system. 149 

authority to do so, derived from the existing religious 
community of which they were members, but merely 
on the ground of supposed personal qualifications, then 
however wise in themselves the institutions, and how- 
ever, in themselves, fit, the persons appointed, there can 
be more doubt that the guilt of schism would be incurred 
in this case, than that the other, just mentioned, would 
be an act of rebellion." 

It is curious to see how Dr. Whately attributes to a 
regularly constituted Christian society, on the mere 
ground of prescription, the authority which he refuses 
to apostolic constitutions on the ground of divine appoint- 
ment, but his analogy we must pronounce an utter fail- 
ure. Such a society as that which he declares in the 
above passage to be a schismatical one, would, on his 
own principles, have all the essentials of a Christian 
society, and would be as much entitled to a place in the 
Church of Christ, as the society from which they had 
become separated. On his own supposition, they would 
agree in fundamental doctrines with the parent society ; 
— they would have " institutions wise in themselves," 
and well qualified persons, who would be " regularly- 
appointed officers of a regular Christian community," 
and having, according to Dr. Whately's principles, all 
the essentials of a Christian society equally with that 
from which they had broken off, would be equally enti- 
tled to the name and realities of a Church. 

Dr. Whately's illustration from civil government does 
not apply to this case. For a civil government having 
temporal ends and sanctions, acting on the earth in 
earthly things, must needs be exclusive in the territory 
over which it exercises sway, and cannot without sui- 



150 RADICAL TENDENCIES OF 

cide tolerate an imperium in imperio. But the Church 
has to do with spiritual ends and sanctions, and with 
the things of the invisible world. Subjection to it is 
voluntary, and different religious societies may exist 
without interference, within the bounds of the same civil 
jurisdiction. There is not therefore the same necessity 
for adherence to an existing religious society, which 
there is for adherence to the existing institutions of civil 
government, unless there be a particular society of God's 
appointment to which he has commanded us to adhere, 
that is, unless there be a ground of obligation to adhere 
to the Church of apostolic descent, which Dr. Whately 
does not admit. 

The cautions in Scripture, which Dr. Whately would 
fain appropriate, against divisions in the body of Christ, 
do not relate to societies framed upon his system, but to 
that one body of Christ which the Apostles established 
and transmitted. He has shown no concluding reason 
why men may not form as many societies as they please, 
which shall equally be entitled to the name of churches 
of Christ, provided they infringe not " the fundamental 
principles laid down by (our Lord) Himself and his 
Apostles." 

But even by his own admissions, those bodies which 
he terms schismatical ones, must eventually become true 
churches. When the generation which had separated 
for insufficient reasons from a true Church of Christ 
should have passed away, and have been succeeded by 
a new generation occupying their places, that body, 
which, according to Dr. Whately, was to the original 
separatists a schismatical one, would be to their succes- 
sors a Church demanding rightful allegiance. For he 



dr. whately's system. 151 

says, " The Church, whatever it is, in which each man 
was originally enrolled a member, has the first claim to 
his allegiance, supposing there is nothing in its doctrines 
or practice which he is convinced is unscriptural and 
wrong,"* and he says further, "And the Christian's 
obligation to submit to the (not unscriptural) laws and 
officers of his Church, being founded on the principles 
above explained, is independent of all considerations of 
the regularity or irregularity of the original formation of 
that Church. * * * * * * A certain Church 
may, suppose, have originated in a rash separation from 
another Church on insufficient grounds ; but for an indi- 
vidual to separate from it merely for that reason, would 
be not escaping but incurring the guilt of schism. "f 

Here then is a complete justification of all schisms, 
which have succeeded in organizing and establishing 
themselves, provided their own members do not think 
their doctrines and practice unscriptusal and wrong. Dr. 
Whately ridicules (page 190) the "happy inconsis- 
tency" of the Non Jurors in admitting " the claims of 
the substituted bishops on the death of their predeces- 
sors" He says, "It seems like maintaining that a 
woman who during her husband's life-time marries 
another man, and has a family, becomes, on her real 
husband's death, the lawful wife of the other, and her 
children legitimate. "| Is not this comparison a most 
happy illustration of his own views of schism, with the 
exception, that he does not wait for the extinction of the 
original Church to legitimate the schism, but converts it, 
side by side, with that from which it separated, into a 
true Church of Christ. Truly the old adage is a good 
* Page 201. f Page 202. \ Page 191. 



152 RADICAL TENDENCIES OF 

one : " Those who live in glass houses should not throw 
stones." There was at least a return to truth and order 
in the position of the Non Jurors which Dr. Whately 
so ridicules, but his own legitimation of schism is the 
very height of absurdity, and the fruitful source of 
confusion. 

But Dr. Whately's system extends even farther than 
this, and justifies the wildest license of religious doc- 
trine and practice. He makes the judgment of every 
individual the standard of absolute duty. He not only 
protests against requiring the acceptance of the creeds 
of the Church, but against any external standard of 
belief and practice : " If any man or body of men refer 
us to Scripture, as the sole authoritative standard, mean- 
ing that we are not to be called on to believe any thing 
as a necessary point of faith on their word, but only on 
our own conviction that it is scriptural, then they place 
our faith on the basis, not of human authority, but of 
divine. But if they call on us, as a point of conscience, 
to receive whatever is proved to their satisfaction from 
Scriptures, even though it may appear to us unscrip- 
tural, then, instead of releasing us from the usurped 
authority of man taking the place of God, they are 
placing on us two burdens instead of one. * You 
require us,' we might reply, ' to believe, first, that 
whatever you teach is true; and secondly, besides this, 
to believe also, that it is a truth contained in Scrip- 
ture ; and we are to take your icord for both!'"* 
And again : " The distinction, as I have above remarked, 
is apparent only, and not really important, between those 
who require the acceptance of what they teach, inde- 
* Pages 164, 165. 



dr. whately's system. 153 

pendently of Scripture, and those who do refer to Scrip- 
ture as the ground of their oivn conviction, or at least as 
confirmatory of their teaching, but require their interpre- 
tations of Scripture to be implicitly received ; denying 
to individuals the right and the duty of judging ulti- 
mately for themselves. The real distinction is between 
those who do, and those who do riot recognize this right 
and duty."* 

What is all this, but an assertion that the meaning of 
Scripture is each individual's conviction of its mean- 
ing, formed upon his own independent examination of 
Scripture, that there is no external sense of Scripture 
which can be clearly ascertained, and which it is there- 
fore the duty of each individual to receive, and that con- 
sequently, the Anglican and American churches act most 
unjustifiably in asserting, the one that the Apostles' 
and Nicene creeds, the other that " The three creeds, 
Nicene Creed, Athanasius's Creed, and that which is 
commonly called the Apostles' Creed, ought thoroughly 
to be received and believed : for they may be proved by 
most certain warrants of Holy Scripture." Here the 
assertion is that they may be proved, and therefore ought 
to be received, and not that they actually conform to 
the conviction of each individual, and therefore by him 
should be received. On the other hand, the Anglican 
and American churches maintain it to be the duty of 
each individual to conform his convictions to the true 
sense of Scripture, and thus, to use Dr. W.V language, 
"call on us, as a point of conscience, to receive what- 
ever is proved to their satisfaction from Scriptures, even 
though it may appear to us unscriptural," and thus too, 

* Pages 168, 169. 
14 



154 RADICAL TENDENCY OF 

according to Dr. W., "instead of releasing us from the 
usurped authority of man taking the place of God, the) 
are placing on us two burdens instead of one." 

The English Church unequivocally asserts, in spite 
of individual convictions, " Which Faith, except even- 
one do keep whole and undefiled : without doubt lie 
shall perish everlastingly," and then proceeds to a most 
explicit statement of the faith which is thus enjoined 
under anathema. 

According to Dr. Whately's assertion of the right and 
the duly of the exercise of independent individual judg- 
ment in the investigation of Scripture, and the unlaw- 
fulness of any man or body of men requiring, "as a 
point of conscience" the reception of any particular 
sense of Scripture, truth is a mere attribute of the indi- 
vidual mind, and changes with every conviction and 
caprice. The interpretation of the Socinian is to be 
respected as the sense of Scripture, as much as that of 
the upholder of the catholic doctrine of the Trinity, the 
interpretation of the Pelagian as much as that of the 
maintainer of the Church's doctrine of grace. There 
is no fixed standard of scriptural truth to which all men 
are held, and which, by the lawful authority of the 
Church, they may be required to receive. 

The doctrine of the Anglican and American churches 
is most different. They assert in Article 20th : " The 
Church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies, and 
authority in controversies of Faith ;" but what is an 
authority which men are not bound to respect and obey ? 
The Church exercises her authority in setting forth the 
catholic creeds, as she has always held them, as the true 
sense of Scripture, and to this exercise of authority the 



dr. whately's system. 155 

Anglican and American churches, as we have already 
seen, assert it to be the duty of men to submit, — because 
submission to it is submission to the truth, not merely 
to men's own convictions of what is truth. 

And again these churches say in the preface to their 
Ordinal, " It is evident unto all men, diligently reading 
Holy Scripture and ancient authors, that from the Apos- 
tles' time there have been these orders of ministers in 
Christ's Church — Bishops, Priests and Deacons." Now 
surely the Church does not mean to assert that this fact 
is evident to the actual conviction of all men reading 
Holy Scripture and ancient authors, for this would be a 
palpable untruth. She must mean therefore that this 
fact is so evidently contained in Holy Scripture and 
ancient authors, that all men reading them ought to see 
it. The position of the Anglican and American churches 
therefore is, that truth is fixed, and external, and ascer- 
tainable, and that men are bound to receive it, and may 
be required in conscience to submit to it. 

And this position is one founded in the common sense 
and reason of mankind. Dr. Whately's position on the 
other hand that the convictions of each individual are 
the only allowable test of truth, and that we may not 
require individuals to accept a sense of Scripture which 
does not harmonize with their own convictions of its 
sense, is a denial of the objective reality of truth, and a 
justification of the wildest excesses of doctrine profess- 
edly derived from Scripture. For if there be no stand- 
ard to which we may require men to submit, then there 
is no standard from which we can blame them for depart- 
ing. If all that is necessary be a reception of Scripture 
in their own sense of it, as a standard, then every sense 



155 RADICAL TENDENCY OF 

which men put upon it, is equally entitled to the name of 
scriptural tru. This conclusion cannot be evaded, 

except by the erection of an external standard, such :.- 
found in the creeds and authority of the Church CanV 
and ag idard Dr. Whately strong! v pro- 

tests. The conclusion therefore is a direct result of Dr. 
Y\ hately's principles. 

He might endeavor to change the convictions of an 
individual who differed from himself, and might succeed 
in doing so, but he acknowledges no standard except the 
dual ret y which he could determine that 

the new convictions were any nearer the rrw/A-than the 
. : and the individual reason is an equal test of truth 
the most conflicting views. On Dr. Whr. rin- 

lesj he could indee, eat the convictions of dif- 

eiduals of the meaning of Scripture are 
ferent, but he could not decide which convictions were 
erroneous and which were true, onlc eould take 

n individual reason as the test of truth, and then 
he could not justly deny to those who might differ from 
him the same use of their individual reason, and attri- 
bute too the same importance and the same claim to 
truth to their reason as to his own. Thus would truth 
be moved from its eternal basis, and seek in vain a res 
ing-place upon the changing sands of private judgment 
and caprice. Dr. Whately charges upon the advocee 
of k * Church Principles" a si ejection of scriptural truth 
to their vain tradition, and an obliteration of it by the 
supremacy of tradition. We have shown, we trust, that 
catholic tradition is a safe and heaven-derived help to 
the right understanding of Scripture, but do not Dr. 
Whately's principles completely enslave scriptural truth 



dr. whately's system. 157 

to the wildness and waywardness of unguided and mis- 
guided reason, and thus destroy its life and real. 

Hi- a not only sanctions the wildest excesses in 

doctrine, but also the most causeless schisms from exist- 
ing religious societies, and of course schisms from the 
Church, the body of Christ. "We have already shown 
that his comparison between civil and religious cornmu- 
a does not hold, and that on his principles any indi- 
viduals might form new religious societies without any 
important differences from those from which they should 
separate ; but Dr. Whately himself admits that separa- 
tion for good reasons from the Church to which one had 
belonged is justifiable, and a hat each individual, 

relying upon his own convictions, is the judge for him- 
self of the validity of the reasons for a separation : 
" The Church, whatever it is, in which each man was 
originally enrolled a member, has the first claim to his 
allegiance, supposing there is nothing in its doctrines 
or practice which he is convinced is unscriptural and 
wrong. He is of course bound, in deference to the 
higher authority of Christ and the Apostles, to renounce 
mmunion if he does feel such a conviction ; but not 
from motives of mere fancy or worldly advantage. All 
separation, in short, must be eith'er a duty, or a n 
And again: "As for the question, what are, and what 
are not, to be accounted essential points, — what will, 
and what will not, justify, and require separation, — it 
would be foreign from the present purpose to discuss 
The differences between two churches may appear 
/.rial, and nc :ial to two persons equally con- 

scientious, and equally careful in forming a judgment, 

* Page C01. 
14* 



158 RADICAL TENDENCY OF 

All I am insisting on is, that the matter is one which 
does call for that careful and conscientious judgment. 
A man should deliberately, and with a sense of deep 
responsibility, make up his mind, as to what is, or is not, 
to the best of his judgment, essential, before he resolves 
on taking, or not taking, a step which must in every case 
be either a duty or a sin."* 

Is there not here a justification for all the sects that 
have ever separated from the catholic Church of Christ? 
Have they not all acted upon their own convictions of 
what was right and scriptural ? Have they not been 
loud in their assertion of their own purity, and in their 
condemnation of the Church? Have not the very argu- 
ments of Dr. Whately been the justifying pleas of 
Donatists, Luciferians, Puritans, of all sects ancient and 
modern ? Let a man's own convictions be held up to 
him as his standard of duty, and schism from the Church 
of God has its perfect justification. 

Another tendency of Dr. Whately's system is to exalt 
human wisdom in things divine, — the very opposite of 
the scriptural principle, " But God hath chosen the 
foolish things of the world, to confound -the wise ; and 
God hath chosen the weak things of the world, to con- 
found the things which are mighty ; And base things of 
the world, and things which are despised, hath God 
chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought 
things that are ; That no flesh should glory in his pre- 
sence." 

We give two or three exemplifications of the ten- 
dency of Dr. Whately's system to exalt human wisdom 
in things divine. 

* Pages 202, 203. 



dr. whately's system. 1&9 

He insists strongly on the fact that ministerial au- 
thority in the Church must emanate from the commu- 
nity itself which receives the ministration. He says : 
"I remember seeing a censure passed on some one, 
who had presumed to appoint another as a Bishop; 
not, on the ground (which would have been a very just 
one) of his having no authority from any Church to 
make the appointment, but on the ground of his not 
being himself a Bishop ; for how — it was urged — can 
a spring rise above the level of its source ? how can an 
individual appoint another to an ecclesiastical office 
higher than he himself holds ? How indeed, — it might 
have been added — can any individual, whether Bishop 
or not, appoint another to any office, — high or low, 
unless authorized by the community to do so ?" He 
then proceeds to argue vehemently against the idea of a 
power to ordain derived from bishop to bishop, and not 
owing its origin to any particular community, and says : 
" On this system the Church is made a sort of append- 
age to the priesthood ; not, the ministry, to the Church. "t 
We may say more truly, that on his system, a power 
derived from God to convey ministerial authority, is set 
aside, and replaced by an authority professing to be 
divine, yet confessedly originated by man. The Apos- 
tles derived their ministerial authority directly from 
Christ; and the ministers who succeeded them, by Dr. 
Whately's admission, derived their authority from them; 
the apostolic commission therefore, as acted on by the 
Apostles and their successors, did not owe its validity 
to the Christian communities to whom they ministered, 
and we must look to these later ages of the Church for 
* Page 222. f Page 223. 



160 RADICAL TENDENCY OF 

a ministry not holding under this apostolic commis- 
sion, which shall clearly come up (or down) to Dr. 
Whately's ideas of ministerial authority, by deriving 
their commission solely from the communities to which 
they minister. His supposition that all the ministry of 
a Christian Church might utterly apostatize from gospel 
truth under circumstances which would leave the people 
without a ministry, if they had not power to originate 
one for themselves, displays a want of faith in God's 
promises and appointments, which is truly sad to con- 
template. 

Perhaps the most remarkable exemplification in Dr. 
Whately's book, of the subjection of the kingdom of 
God to that wisdom of man, which is foolishness with 
God, is found in what he says of those bodies of Chris- 
tians, who at the time of the Reformation found them- 
selves without bishops : "It follows from those princi- 
ples, that the bodies of Christians we have been speaking 
of, had full power to retain, or to restore, or to originate, 
whatever form of church government, they, in their 
deliberate and cautious judgment, might deem best for 
the time, and country, and persons, they had to deal 
with ; whether exactly similar, or not, to those intro- 
duced by the Apostles ; provided nothing were done 
contrary to gospel precepts and principles. They were 
therefore, perfectly at liberty to appoint bishops, even if 
they had none that had joined in the Reformation ; or 
to discontinue the appointment, even if they had; 
whichever they were convinced was the most condu- 
cive, under existing circumstances, to the great objects 
of all church government."* 

* Pages 216, 217. 



dr. whately's system. 161 

Here is certainly carte-blanche to the wisdom and 
discretion of man in the kingdom of God. These Re- 
formers themselves, as we have already shown in a 
former chapter, never thought of such a justification as 
Dr. Whately has furnished for them. They mourned 
the absence of an apostolical episcopacy. They only 
defended their omission of it on the plea of absolute 
necessity. Calvin, in his letter to the King of Poland, 
said, " It were desirable that uninterrupted succession 
should be in force, that the ministerial office might be 
delivered, as it were, by the hands. But because the 
true series of ordination was broken off by the tyranny 
of the Pope, there is now need of new resources for 
the renovation of the Church. This office was wholly 
extraordinary, which God committed to us, when he 
made use of our labor to collect churches." The same 
ground is taken in the public confessions both of the 
Calvinists and Lutherans. But Dr. Whately not only 
justifies these Reformers in remaining without a minis- 
try of apostolic succession, but in throwing it off, if, in 
the good providence of God it had been preserved to 
them. Can there be a more complete subjection than 
this, of the appointments of God in his Church, to the 
wisdom of man ? With Dr. Whately, the whole ques- 
tion of church government and organization is one of 
human wisdom, and not of divine establishment, — 
and a wisdom too, which disregards and sets aside the 
clear appointments of God. 

His system too, as we have seen, extends its mantle 
of charity, and its aegis of protection, over the most 
varying sects and doctrines, presenting a picture not 
unlike that which Gibbon draws of " the Roman princes, 



1G2 RADICAL TENDENCY OF 

who beheld without concern a thousand forms of religion 
subsisting in peace under their gentle sway." After 
denying the divine principles on which the unity of the 
Church is founded, Dr. Whately endeavors to con- 
struct a unity, which man may contemplate as the result 
of his own skill and wisdom, (see page 197,) but which 
is like a garment of shreds and patches, claiming com- 
petition with the seamless coat of the Lord. After laying 
down principles, which are a full justification of error 
and schism of every variety, he strives to parry the con- 
sequences of these principles, by the substitution of the 
insufficient and inapplicable maxims of civil society, in 
place of those safeguards of divine enactment, which 
are the only effectual preservatives of truth and order in 
the Church of God. He thus does, what in the outset 
we proposed to prove upon his system : " shuts God 
out of his own kingdom, and leaves it a prey to the 
fickleness and waywardness and radical spirit of human 
invention." 

How opposite to this spurious liberality is the true and 
free system of the catholic Church. That recognizes 
the obligation of men to receive and obey the revealed 
truth of heaven, while it leaves them to reject this truth 
at their peril, and as they must answer it to their God. 
It thus secures the interests of truth, and the rights and 
liberties of conscience. It recognizes also, all the means 
which God has provided for bringing us to the know- 
ledge of his truth, the Scriptures, which the universal 
voice of the Church attests to be the depository of all 
saving truth, — the testimony of the Church of all ages, 
an index of the right interpretation of Scripture as sure 
as is the universal voice of mankind of the great ideas 



dr. whately's system. 163 

of morality and natural religion, — and the harmony 
between the voice of the universal Church and the evi- 
dent teaching of Scripture, as a test clear and conclusive 
of the real revelation of God in distinction from all the 
perversions of man. The catholic system also recog- 
nizes the ministry of God's appointment, which has 
been transmitted in the Church, the pillar and ground 
of the truth ; and, on the basis of divine appointment, 
requires adherence to this ministry, and a reception of 
the blessings of the gospel by its dispensation. It does 
not prescribe rules to the wisdom of God, or refuse to 
receive a revelation from him unless made in accordance 
with the preconceptions of man. It loves to trace the 
appointments of God, wherever and however he makes 
himself known. It rejoices in hints and intimations of 
his will. It receives his revealed system in all humility, 
as he has revealed it. Reverence, and not captious rea- 
soning, is its characteristic. Continuance in the institu- 
tions of God, and not a love of human inventions, is its 
delight. It believes in the promises of God to his 
Church, and exercises faith in his providential care of 
the flock which he has gathered from a sinful world. 
And it would not anticipate the movements of divine 
providence by the vain and rash devices of human wis- 
dom. It would stay itself in quiet waiting upon God, 
till his glory shall arise upon his Church, and he shall 
restore it to the purity, the holiness, and the unity, 
which it has long since lost. And while it rejoices in 
the restoration which, by the good providence of God, 
has been effected in the reformed branches of the Church, 
acting as the authorized representatives of God in the 
work of their own purification, and in their assertion of 



164 RADICAL TENDENCY OF 

that liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free, it 
abhors schism from the body of Christ, in which he 
saves his people ; and the bitter fruits of schism it sees 
and laments. It maintains the obligation of men to con- 
tinue in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in- 
this cherished communion, it affords them a rest, a satis- 
faction, a consolation, which they will seek in vain amid 
the tossings of human systems. 

The Catholic system is thus eminently conservative. 
It is the very soul of truth, of stability, and of heaven- 
descended order. It is the truth of God in union with 
his own means for preserving it and making it effica- 
cious. It is a safeguard against heresy and division, and 
all their blasting influences. It accords to man that 
liberty, which is the prerogative of the human soul, 
while it affords ample assistance and scope for the right 
and rational use of this liberty. It leads men in the 
way of holy truth which God himself hath laid down. 
It disciplines all the powers of the soul. It harmonizes 
them, and grants them ample range, — while by uniting 
man to God by the seals and ordinances of a divine 
establishment, it makes him partaker of the divine 
nature, and expands and cultivates his spiritual faculties 
by filling them with the very fullness of God. It acts 
upon the senses by "the beauty of holiness" of its pub- 
lic services, — it engages the heart in the deep and sol- 
emn strains of its worship, — it gives scope to the imagi- 
nation in the thronging associations of its " Communion 
of Saints," and its full and well-ordered presentation in 
its "ritual year," of the glorious plan of redemption, — 
it addresses the conscience by its monitions, and informs 
the reason by its instructions. It thus aims at the con- 



165 

trol of the whole man, that all his powers and faculties 
may be consecrated, and presented to God as a living 
sacrifice holy and acceptable. 

The catholic Church of Christ is the home of his 
revealed truth, it is the house in which he shelters, and 
feeds, and cherishes, his redeemed family, — in which 
he gives them earnests and pledges of that joy, which 
they shall have in his Father's house above. In the 
communion of the catholic Church therefore we desire 
to live, in her communion to die ; — for her peace and 
union we would fervently pray, that purified and re- 
stored to her primitive oneness and faith and piety, she 
may, through all generations, bring forth sons and 
daughters unto God, whom he will acknowledge for 
his, in that day when He maketh up his jewels. 



BO OKS, 
LATELY PUBLISHED 

BY 

H. HOOKER. 

JACKSON ON THE CHURCH.— This is the production of 
one of the greatest minds ever reared in the Church of England. 
For originality ; for profound views on the nature, office, and des- 
tiny of the Church, this work should be studied by all scholars. 

BISHOP HOPKINS' FOUR LETTERS to the Bishops, 
Clergy and Laity, complete in 1 vol. 12mo. 

THOUGHTS OF PEACE, for a Christian Sufferer— being a 
collection of select passages of Scripture, with sacred poetry, 
adapted to devout and consolatory contemplation. This book is 
remarkably suited for a gift to afflicted people. 

COTTERILL'S FAMILY PRAYERS— a new edition of 
these most simple, devotional, and scriptural prayers. 

PASCAL'S PROVINCIAL LETTERS— very celebrated for 
wit, argument, and beauty of style. 

REV. HENRY BLUNT'S WORKS— now extended to 10 
vols. 12mo. 

REV. GEORGE HILL'S LECTURES ON DIVINITY, first 

American edition. This work is a text book in various Theologi- 
cal Seminaries, and is remarkable for its great candour and ability. 

THE SCHOOL GIRL IN FRANCE, by Miss R. McCrut- 
dell. The authoress had her education in France, and describes 
what she has seen and experienced in Romish schools. Her Nar- 



rative is full of incidents of thrilling interest. She is at present 
at the head of one of the largest and most flourishing seminaries, 
for the education of young ladies, in London. No work, it is 
believed, is more worthy of being circulated and read as exhibiting 
the perils to which youth are exposed of becoming papists, even 
in the best regulated schools under the conduct of that Church. 

Just published, by the same authoress— " THE ENGLISH 
GOVERNESS, a Tale of Real Life." This work gives a pic- 
ture of the state of religion in Spain — and in the lives of the 
persons who figure principally in the work there is the happiest 
illustrations of sanctified afflictions, and of the reward which 
usually attends, even in this life, a strict adherence to religious 
principle. The work abounds in very many striking events 
which impart a special interest from the fact that they are occur- 
rences of real life. 

BICKERSTETH'S FAMILY PRAYERS— a new manual 
of family devotions, containing daily morning and evening prayers 
for eight weeks. 

BICKERSTETH ON BAPTISM— a family book, abounding 
in thoughts and meditations on the rite of Baptism. 

H. H. keeps on hand Miscellaneous and Religious Books, of all 
descriptions, and of a useful tendency, which it is his purpose to 
sell as low as possible. 

WORKS ON FAMILY PRAYER. 

Bickersteth's Family Prayers. 

Cotterill's 

Wilberforce's " 

Berian's 

Jay's 

Dr. Hook's 

Nelson's " 

Jenks' 

Barnes' 



^s/. 



<Z*Z- 







APOSTOLICAL SYSTEM 



OF 



4fl 



THE CHURCH 



■*¥$ 



, DEFENDED ; 
IN A REPLY TO DR. WHATELY 



i> 



ON 



THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 






BY SAMUEL BUEL, A. M., 

-of® ** 

"*^ Rkctor of Emmanuel Parish, Cumberland, Md. 



^ 
*$ 



PHILADELPHIA : 

H. HOOKER, 178 CHESNUT STREET. 
1844. 



6U466H666666664446^i*«66 






PUBLISHED BIT H. HOOKER. 



Proverbial Philosophy, 

ijff A Book of Thoughts and Arguments, originally 
^g treated by Martin Farquhar Tupper, A. M., first 

"^M complete American edition. 

->li For poetic imagery, i\>r brightness of thought, for 
J|| clear and striking- views cf all the interests and condi- 
■»fe tious of man, this work has been pronounced by the 
5S| English and American press as unequalled. 



" We are charmed with its Christian philosophy, its 
deep reflection, its exalted sentiment, and its poetry." — 
Southern Literary Messenger. 

" The article entitled ' The Dream of Ambition,' we 
think among the most sublime productions of the age ; 
yet it does not stand out in any striking or undue supe- 
riority to the rest of the book." — True Catholic. 

" It is a work of high literary rank, and superior to 
any poetical composition we have lately seen." — Bos- 
ton Post. 



ft* 



" This is a singular book, indeed : its sentiments are 
replete with wisdom, and are clothed with such poetic 
beauty, and invested with such singular associations, as ||J 
give the force and freshness of new truths." — N. Y. ^r°- 



Evangelist. 



'" One of the most thoughtful, and brilliant, and fin- ttj! 
ished productions of the age." — Banner of the Cross, Wg- 

" It is a book of thoughts of peculiar brilliancy on SP 
subjects of general interest to all men." — Tribune. §t£ 



j|| ' ; It is a book easily understood, and repaying the 
<>|§ reader on every page with sentiments true to experi- 
£j| ence, and expressed often with surprising beauty." — 
a Presbyterian. 



<: < 






c c 

<r C 

<. <-" 

<r < 
<r c 
<:< c 

c c 

CCC,;. 

CCCC ' 



<. C < 
~c C «C 

c<z croc . 

... ^3 c </ 
<3. c <<\ 



croc 



do c • 
<CC CC 



«2C KL 

c^<c 

CO 

C-C 

Co 
o o 

C«C 



o o 
«oo 



<3 <r 



< c c <: 

C C c_ <z 

< c C C 
C C C« 

c c < ^ 
CC c c 

<: c c 

• < C c ' 

■< c C^.- 

< ' c > 

c c r - <^ 
* C< C 

( ... I <^ 

0< C 

« < c 

c c 






c 5 



o < 
CC < 

C C 

c < 
(C 
CC 

c c 

C I 



cc 
<r c 

dE^O ■ 

c c 

«*C ' 
<sgr c? ■ - » ' 
c£* O 

cspc <L«r 
dd£cc*£< 

■•r«c*-. <<.«-' 
..»«' <0* 

: t3l3C<C* 
c esc* O 



* < 

< C 

C C 
< c 

c c 

«r c 
c < 

C C 
CLC 

c c_ 

< C 
c '<- 

< c 
« c 
c C 






CCC^. 1 

CO; ^ 

<: CLC- 



<XCc <"^^" = 



cc 






IS 



ccc: 



" c 

c; 
<«- <r_ cess. 



CiCv 

<£' <C" -CT ' C 



- C-Cc,: 



r^3C<K 

c<<: c« 
<: <r<:c 

-cCCC 



C C <^ « 

<r <T cc <<- 
«r <T c$^ «- 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: August 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 



c c 
c c 
c < 



c < 

C C 

c -c 

«T C 

3-1 c 



«CXc 

<1< CAL- 
CIC c<d 

c:c < <*i 

CI c < 

dec: 

c < 

<gf<L 



^5 c 



c 












C c_.c ^ 

CC«C . ** 

ccC ^#-- 
3:<«L . set,: 

ccc<: ^ 

CCc< ^ 

CCcC ' *** 

: cicoc: 

1<X< 

rccoc < 
1 <jc<jci 



CTC1C4C 

ccc< «- 

^: <r ec 
<T cC 

1 <*c: 






C <8d. 

if 

<r c 

C C 
C CI 
<L <_. 

-«s c." 

cc 

c <_ 
CC 



<d 















<C«. O ' 

cC cv 
<C .5: 

•<«:-> 5T- 



<^^V 



c c c 



c: < cc 



< cc 

<1 < C CC 

<: c c c c 

ccc 



cr c: 



C^ 



cic 



<^ ^ 



>^ s^~ c --■ - 
^- 7^" cT S^ 

^1 <*— Y^^ <r*C 

^C ^^ 
^^ ^ dC 



' *l!lcl < ^ , 












